CNN founder Ted Turner recently died, prompting President Donald Trump to reflect on what the network had become since Turner sold it decades ago. Trump argued on Truth Social that Turner grew disillusioned with CNN’s increasingly ideological direction, and the CNN founder himself said much the same before his death.Now, as CNN’s parent company prepares to be acquired by the pro-Trump Ellison family’s Paramount-Skydance empire, the political and media establishment is panicking over the possibility that the network could finally move back toward the middle.One day before Turner’s passing, and just weeks after Trump Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr said that the acquisition of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, by Ellison’s company, Paramount-Skydance, would be approved quickly, the agency’s sole Democratic commissioner opened a “rigorous review” of the merger.
TED TURNER, 1938–2026
This renewed scrutiny comes as CNN faces yet another self-inflicted controversy that underscores exactly why so many Americans have lost trust in the network.
When late-night host Jimmy Kimmel joked right before the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that first lady Melania Trump looked like an “expectant widow,” it was bad enough. When a would-be assassin attempted to shoot at Trump officials, it became so much worse.
