There is no one in American history who has done more to change how the world gets its news, for better or for worse, than Ted Turner.
His bold, audacious bet to launch CNN completely transformed the news business, busting the tightly curated delivery platforms that came before it and opening the floodgates of news to the people.
News used to be defined by scarcity: Limited physical space in newspapers and magazines, limited time on the airwaves for broadcast news. Turner ushered in an era of news abundance, where anyone could get the headlines at any time. Perhaps even more importantly, the creation of CNN meant that stories that would have otherwise been left out of the news products in print and broadcast TV found a way to reach the wider world.
The Overton Window of what qualified as “news” got bigger and wider, likely for the better.
As CNN showed during the Gulf War, news could be raw, and visceral, and uncertain. Anchors weren’t telling you what had happened, but showed you what was happening. That was a sea change for news, and we are all living in that world, even if the delivery system has moved toward digital platforms.
