CNN's Historic Jerry Falwell & Jesse Helms Connections

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner.)

During the Reagan era, TBS/CNN’s then-chairman of the board, Ted Turner, was a friend of a [now-deceased] right-wing religious extremist named Jerry Falwell. As Contemporary American Business Leaders recalled, “Turner, like his friend Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, viewed MTV as a moral corrupter of youth.” The same book also noted that, in support of Jerry Falwell’s right-wing social and cultural agenda, “Turner took on MTV, the music video cable channel, unveiling his `Night Track’ in June 1983, which was to play a `pop-40 light’ series of videos.”

It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks also noted that in 1981 “Turner…found himself aligned with the Reverend Jerry Falwell…in demanding that the three major networks return to more wholesome programming like Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best." The same book also revealed that on June 19, 1982 Turner spoke to a right-wing Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Philadelphia and “after urging the veterans to join him in his quest for a congressional investigation of network television” Turner “gracefully accepted the VFW’s annual `News Media Award’ as the man who had done the most that year to promote `traditional American values.’”

Turner was also a friend of the ultra-right North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms during the Reagan era and on June 27, 1984 Turner gave “a rousing speech before Washington’s National Conservative Foundation” in which “he vowed he would soon take over one of the Big Three” TV networks, according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks. Although Turner’s media conglomerate had lost $77 million on its CNN TV subsidiary operation during the previous five years, “in 1985 Turner decided to take over CBS” after “his friends Jerry Falwell and Senator Jesse Helms had announced their intention to take over the network to end its `liberal bias'” according to Contemporary American Business Leaders.

Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms by Ernest Ferguson also revealed in 1986 that “In a deposition before CBS attorneys, Turner admitted that he had held extensive discussions with Helms and the ultra-right FIM [Fairness In Media] about how they might cooperate in their efforts.” Turner also apparently told a Rotarian luncheon ground in the 1980s that “I think we’d be in a hell of a mess…if we didn’t have a Right Wing.”

But Turner’s 1985 bid to take over CBS was unsuccessful because Turner did not yet have enough money in his bank account to acquire CBS at that time. In response to Turner’s attempt to take over CBS, “CBS filed actions in both New York State and federal courts, accusing TBS of a litany of…security violations, as well as conspiracy to defraud…” according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic MGM/United Artists Connection

CNN's Historic Apartheid Regime & Citibank Connections

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

As security for the initial increase in TBS/CNN corporate debt that resulted from his broadcasting system establishing CNN in 1979, Ted Turner utilized some of his one-ounce, solid gold South African Krugerrand coins. During the years when the apartheid regime ruled South Africa, Turner—despite anti-apartheid movement calls for people not to purchase Krugerrand coins—apparently “bought $2 million worth” of Krugerrand coins “at $275 an ounce,” which rapidly increased in value, since “within a year” after Turner’s Krugerrand purchase “gold had hit $800 an ounce,” according to CNN: The Inside Story. From his investment in the apartheid regime’s Krugerrand coins, Turner “made over $3.6 million profit,” according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks.

Turner’s CNN operation wasn’t as profitable at first as his Super Station’s broadcasting of wrestling matches, baseball games and basketball contests to pay-TV cable viewers had been. As Contemporary American Business Leaders observed:

“The first three years were terrible for CNN. It lost oceans of money.”

Yet despite losing $24 million between 1979 and 1982 as a result of his CNN operation, Turner—like Australian global media mogul Rupert Murdoch—was able to convince a few Manhattan-based banks to rescue him financially in the early 1980s. During the early years of the Reagan Era, Turner’s TBS (its name had been changed from TCC in 1979 to TBS) was given a $50 million loan for three years from Citibank and Manufacturers Hanover Trust to enable him to keep his money-losing “alternative” CNN operation going when it was still losing $2 million a month. Turner’s TBS/CNN was also lent $190 million from a Chemical Bank-led consortium and $50 million from First Boston during this same period. Not surprisingly, CNN did not provide its pay-TV viewers with much in the way of hard-hitting investigative reporting about Citicorp between 1980 and 1994.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic Jerry Falwell & Jesse Helms Connections

CNN's Historic Atlanta Braves/Hawks' Sports Connections & Origins

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

To provide sports programming for the pay-TV cable viewers of his “Super-Station” without having to pay a third-party for the right to broadcast games, former CNN Owner Turner purchased The Atlanta Braves in 1976 for $9.6 million and, in 1977, also acquired the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. As Current Biography noted in 1982, by owning the Braves Turner avoided “contract disputes and negotiations over broadcast schedules.” Not surprisingly, “alternative” CNN hasn’t, historically, often provided its viewers with much investigative reporting about racism in the ranks of the NBA team owners or among major league baseball team owners (or much investigative reporting about the institutional racism of all the non-sports world business firms owned by these folks--from which these professional sports team owners also make big money).

In 1979 the then-41-year-old Turner decided to enter the world of “alternative” electronic journalism. As CNN: The Inside Story by Hank Whittimore noted, the then-multi-millionaire Turner “decided to take every nickel of profit from his growing Super-Station and from the sale of any other asset of Turner Communications Corporation, and pour it into the cable news network.” After selling his WRET-TV Channel 36 station in Charlotte for $20 million to Westinghouse and being given a $20 million credit line by First National Bank of Chicago, Turner was able to set up his CNN “alternative” media news operation in 1979.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic Apartheid Regime and Citibank Connections

CNN/TBS's Pre-1979 Hidden History

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

The then-55-year-old former yachtsman and playboy who then headed the TBS media conglomerate of which CNN was then a subsidiary in 1994—Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III—inherited his father’s billboard advertising business in 1963 and was able to turn the family firm into a highly influential global enterprise in the years after President Kennedy was mysteriously assassinated. The son of Ed Turner and Florence Rooney Turner, Ted Turner was actually born in Cincinnati, Ohio—although he used to promote himself as “a Southern folk hero” and also became known as “The Mouth of the South” in the early 1970s.

After his ultra-right-wing father moved to Georgia, became a millionaire by selling ad space and purchased plantations in both South Carolina and Georgia, Ted Turner was sent up north to Brown University, where he was suspended for participating in a drunken brawl at a women’s college, prior to serving a six-month stint in the U.S. Coast Guard. Returning to Brown University to resume his studies, Turner was then expelled for violating Ivy League regulations which at that time prohibited men from entertaining women in Brown’s dormitories. A classmate of Turner named Alan Laymon recalled that “Ted…would also run around…bellowing Nazi battle hymns outside the Jewish frat house” while at Brown and “Ted also put signs `Warning from the Ku Klux Klan’ on the doors of the few blacks then at Brown” during his college years, according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks: Ted Turner’s Amazing Story by Porter Bibb.

After his expulsion from Brown, Turner returned to the South in late 1960 to become the general manager of the Macon, Georgia branch of his father’s business. Following his father’s March 1963 suicide, Turner became the president and chief executive of Turner Advertising Company prior to his 25th birthday. He also joined the Young Republicans because “he felt at ease among these budding conservatives and was merely following in Ed Turner’s far-right footsteps,” according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks.

During the Vietnam War Era, Turner’s billboard business, which “had virtual monopolies in Savannah, Macon, Columbus and Charleston” and was “the largest outdoor advertising company in the Southeast,” according to It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks, prospered. The same book also observed that after his father’s death, Turner “discovered his father had sheltered a substantial amount of taxable income over the years by personally lending it back to the company” and “discovered that the billboard business could be a gold mine, a tax-depreciable revenue stream that threw off enormous amounts of cash with almost no capital investment.” And in the late 1960s, Turner decided to use the super-profits his inherited billboard monopoly generated to get into the more glamorous world of radio and TV broadcasting, by purchasing some Southern radio and TV stations.

After the FCC, in 1975, allowed Turner’s WTCG-TV-Channel 17 station in Atlanta to begin using a satellite on Dec. 27, 1976 to broadcast old movies, situation-comedy re-runs, cartoons and sports events on a nation-wide basis to U.S. cable-TV subscribers as a “Super-Station,” Turner’s Atlanta TV station became an extremely profitable operation. By the end of 1978, Turner’s WTCG-TV Super-Station was reaching two million cable-TV subscribers and Turner was now worth about $100 million. He was, thus, now able to purchase a 5,000-acre plantation in Jacksonboro, South Carolina for $2 million.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic Atlanta Braves/Hawks’ Sports Connection and Origins

`Downtown''s 1994 Interview With CNN's Then-Public Relations Spokesperson

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

In a January 1994 telephone interview, Downtown asked CNN’s then-public relations spokesperson, Steve Hayworth, to describe the nature of CNN’s connection to the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation during the early 1990s?

“None, that I’m aware of,” the then-CNN spokesperson replied.

After Downtown informed the CNN spokesperson that then-CNN President Tom Johnson was also the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation Chairman of the Board, Hayworth responded that then-CNN President Johnson was “acting as an individual” and not for “the network and company” when he sat on the boards of the LBJ Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation.

Downtown then asked the CNN spokesperson in early 1994 if CNN’s coverage of historical events like the JFK assassination had been affected by the then-CNN president’s past association with Lyndon Johnson?

“No. It would have been revealed in our coverage of the recently released Johnson audio tapes. But we ran more and more excerpts from these tapes than any other network,” Hayworth answered.

When Downtown asked in 1994 how CNN responded to the charge that it has broadcast fewer programs which investigate the JFK assassination than other U.S. television networks, Hayworth noted that “We had a fascinating, live 30th Anniversary show on the Larry King Show," but that CNN was “not an inquisitive” network.

Asked by Downtown in 1994 if he thought it strange that—despite the controversy in the early 1990s surrounding Oliver Stone’s JFK film and the fact that many books on the JFK assassination jumped to the top of the best-seller lists in the early 1990s—the “alternative” CNN had apparently not used its resources to investigate the JFK assassination, the then-CNN spokesperson replied: “This is not an historical or long form network. But if there’s new, revealing news about the JFK assassination, we report it.”

According to Hayworth, a CNN investigation into the JFK assassination in the early 1990s was “not pursued because there’s no new evidence” of any conspiracy or cover-up. Hayworth also asserted that CNN had provided fair access for Oliver Stone and other JFK assassination conspiracy proponents on its interview shows in the early 1990s.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN/TBS’s Pre-1979 Hidden History

CNN's Historic `Newsday/Los Angeles Times'-Mirror Connection

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

One reason Newsday [which was purchased by Cablevision in May 2008] didn’t focus too much on former CNN President Tom Johnson’s historical LBJ connection during the early 1990s was that then-CNN President Johnson was a former top executive of the Los Angeles-based media conglomerate that then owned Newsday during the early 1990s. As the first edition of Everybody’s Business noted in 1980:

“In 1977 boy wonder Tom Johnson…White House fellow at 23, assistant presidential press secretary at 24, confidant of President Lyndon Johnson at 27, editor at 32, publisher at 33—took over the newly created post of president of the Los Angles Times. He was 35. Three years later he became publisher, the first nonfamily member to get the job, which had been held by Otis Chandler for nearly 20 years."

During the 1980s, former CNN President Johnson continued to rise within the Newsday/Times-Mirror media conglomerate. But in the early 1990s, Billionaire Ted Turner hired former Newsday/Times-Mirror Vice-Chairman Johnson to move to Atlanta, Georgia to head the Turner Broadcasting System [TBS]’s then-CNN subsidiary.

As How CNN Fought The War: A View From The Inside by Retired U.S. Air Force Major General Perry Smith noted, “In a remarkable coincidence,” then-LBJ Foundation Chairman Tom Johnson “came on board as the new president” of CNN on “the day before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait…” Besides being CNN’s president in the early 1990s, LBJ’s former top aide and Newsday/Times-Mirror’s former vice-chairman also sat on the board of directors of the Turner Broadcasting System [TBS] and was a vice-president of CNN’s then-TBS parent company in the early 1990s. In addition, CNN’s then-President Johnson also sat on the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation in the early 1990s.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: Downtown’s 1994 Interview With CNN’s Then-Public Relations Spokesperson

CNN's Historic Pre-1994 LBJ Connection

(The following article first appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of the now-defunct alternative newsweekly, Downtown, when CNN was still controlled by Ted Turner)

“When the news is hot, so is CNN…Entering its second decade [in 1991], the network has a new president, Tom Johnson…He worked in the White House for Lyndon Johnson and most recently was vice-chairman of the Times-Mirror Company…”

New York magazine on Feb. 11, 1991

“Johnson, 50, is an affable Georgia native with a Rolodex full of political contacts, dating from his years as an aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson…”

Time magazine on Jan. 6, 1992

“Turner…controls [in the early 1990s] the largest newsgathering organization in the world…He also controls the largest library of motion pictures anywhere, one of the largest collections of animated film, and more individual programming networks than any other broadcaster. His CNN already airs in Spanish and Portuguese to all of Latin America…”

It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks: Ted Turner’s Amazing Story by Porter Bibb in the early 1990s

The president of the Cable News Network [CNN] in the early 1990s—then Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation Chairman of the Board Tom Johnson—worked as a key aide to the U.S. politician most responsible for escalating U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, following the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy.

As Thinking Big by Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolf noted in 1977, “during LBJ’s tenure in the White House,” the CNN President in the early 1990s, Tom Johnson, “became an intern under White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers and rose through the ranks to become assistant to Moyers’ replacement George Christian” and “when Lyndon Johnson returned to Texas in 1969, he brought Tom Johnson along to serve as executive assistant in charge of LBJ’s Texas Broadcasting Company.”

The same book also revealed that in 1970 the then-30-year-old Tom Johnson was elected executive vice-president of LBJ’s Texas Broadcasting Company and “he joined the board of directors of the City National Bank of Austin, headed up LBJ’s Austin station KTBC, and participated in the town’s business-dominated civic groups."

The Austin TV station which CNN’s President in 1994, Tom Johnson, headed in the 1970s was profitable because LBJ “had friends in high places among those who controlled the broadcast industry,” according to a 1978 book by another former LBJ aide, Bobby Baker, titled Wheeling And Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator. The same book also revealed that “it is no accident that Austin, TX, was for years the only city of its size with only one television station” and “LBJ demanded, and received, the opportunity to pick and choose programs for his monopoly station from among those offered by all three of the major networks.” Wheeling And Dealing also points out that “no other television station in America had such a unique and cozy arrangement” as the LBJ-owned KTBC station which CNN’s President in 1994, Tom Johnson, used to head for LBJ.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: CNN’s Historic Newsday/Los Angeles Times-Mirror Connection