Background, Personal Life, & Business Career

This first section of Ted Turner’s profile provides an overview of his personal life and business career. The three principal resources from which this information was derived were: Biography.com, Britannica.com, and InfluenceWatch.com.

Ted Turner was born on November 19, 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, Robert Edward Turner Jr., owned a lucrative billboard advertising business called Turner Advertising. Despite his success as a businessman, the father was afflicted with bipolar disorder. The dramatic mood swings associated with that condition sometimes caused him to physically abuse his son Ted.

In 1956 Turner enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island, but he was expelled three years later for violating dormitory rules against having a female stay in his room overnight.

That same year — 1959 — Turner’s parents divorced.

In 1960, Ted Turner married Judy Nyle Gale, daughter of industrialist Harry Gale Nye Jr.  (The couple had two children before divorcing in 1964.)

In 1960 as well, Turner’s father appointed him as manager of the Macon, Georgia branch office of Turner Advertising. But the company hit hard times financially after the father incurred enormous debt from buying out a competitor in 1962. Unable to cope with the psychological stress associated with that situation, the father committed suicide in 1963, fatally shooting himself.

After his father’s death, Ted Turner became both president and chief executive officer of Turner Advertising.

Turner married Jane Shirley Smith in 1965. (The couple went on to have three children before eventually divorcing in 1988.)

In the late 1960s, when Turner Advertising purchased several radio stations, Ted Turner renamed it Turner Communications. By 1970, it would be the largest advertising company in the southeastern United States.

Also in 1970, Turner purchased a financially struggling UHF television station in Atlanta and subsequently turned it into a profitable operation within three years.

In 1975, Turner’s television station was broadcast to a nationwide cable TV audience. In 1979 it was renamed once again, this time as Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS).

In 1976, Turner founded a private company called Turner Enterprise to manage his various investments.

Through TBS, Turner purchased the Atlanta Braves major league baseball team in 1976 and the Atlanta Hawks professional basketball team in 1977.

In 1980 Turner created CNN (Cable News Network), television’s first 24-hour news channel. Journalist Reese Schonfeld, whom Turner hired to run the new network, conceived the idea for the new station.

In 1986 Turner spent $1.5 billion to purchase the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists (MGM/UA) Entertainment Company, which included MGM’s library of more than 4,000 films.

Because he was in financial debt, Turner in 1986 sold off MGM/UA as well as a share of TBS, though he retained control of the latter. He also retained ownership of MGM’s vast movie library.

In 1987 Turner purchased his first bison ranch, located in Montana.

In 1988, he launched TNT (Turner Network Television).

That same year, Turner purchased World Championship Wrestling (WCW), which he eventually sold to its main rival, Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation (WWF), three years later.

In 1989, Brown University — the school that had expelled him 29 years earlier — awarded Turner an honorary baccalaureate degree.

Turner co-created and co-wrote the animated children’s television series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, which aired from 1990-1996, and whose principle characters were teenaged environmental activists.

In December 1991, Turner married his third wife, actress and leftwing social activist Jane Fonda. (The couple would later divorce in 2001.)

In 1992, Turner launched the Cartoon Network television channel.

In 1993 he oversaw the purchase of two movie production companies, New Line Cinema and Castle Rock Entertainment.

In 1993, Brown University awarded Turner an honorary doctorate.

In 1993 as well, Turner collaborated with Russian journalist Eduard Sagalajev to create the Moscow Independent Broadcasting Company (MIBC), which Turner later (YEAR) sold to Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

In 1994, Turner founded Turner Movie Classics (TMC).

In 1995, Turner received the Peabody Award for personal achievement. The Peabody committee hailed the media mogul as a righteous businessman with “a passionate commitment to make the world a better place than he found it.”

In 1996, Turner sold TBS and CNN to Time Warner for a combined $7.5 billion. As part of the transaction agreement, Turner became a vice-chairman of Time Warner and the head of all of the merged company’s cable television networks.

When Time Warner merged with the Internet company AOL in 2001, Turner became vice-chairman and senior adviser of AOL Time Warner Inc.

Time Warner was purchased by AOL in 2001, and Turner thereafter had little to do with managing the company. But as Influence Watch notes: “Within months of the purchase, the dot-com bubble burst and AOL’s stock price plummeted, costing Turner an estimated $7 billion. Due to pressure from Turner, CEO Gerald Levin resigned and his replacement, Richard Parsons, brought Turner back into a major role in the company.”

In 2002, Turner launched an entirely new business venture when he opened Ted’s Montana Grill, a steakhouse that served bison.

In 2003, Turner resigned from his post as vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner Inc.

In 2006, he announced that he would not be seeking reelection to AOL Time Warner’s board of directors.

“A Socialist at Heart”

Outspoken about his leftwing political views, Turner has proudly called himself “a socialist at heart” — because he would “rather use [his wealth] for the benefit of mankind… than spend it selfishly.”

“Global Citizen”

“I’m a global citizen,” Turner once stated. “Slavery: my fault. Inequality: my fault. Global environmental degradation: my fault. Population explosion: my fault. But, I think I can do something about all it, although it’s wearing me out.”

Activist & Philanthropist

Turner has long been heavily involved in philanthropic activities, giving massive sums of money to a wide array of organizations under the auspices of such entities as his own Turner Foundation, the United Nations Foundation (where Turner served a stint as board chairman of the Board), and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (which Turner co-chaired with former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn). These foundations, respectively, address the causes about which Turner has been most passionate: (a) the environment and population growth; (b) international relations; and (c) nuclear disarmament. Following is an overview of Turner’s involvement in each of these areas:

(a) Environment

To limit population growth and protect the environment, Turner has advocated a “one-child-per-family” policy in the mode of Communist China.

In April 2004 he was the recipient of Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award for his “dedication to advancing reproductive rights and health” — i.e., taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand. Turner has contributed million of dollars to Planned Parenthood for its targeted pro-choice organizing and advocacy. Similarly, his Turner Foundation has directly financed efforts to defeat pro-life legislation and to promote the election of Democratic political candidates who favor unrestricted abortion rights.

On April 25, 2004, Turner was a featured speaker at the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C., which focused chiefly on preserving and expanding women’s right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand. Other speakers at the event included Madeline Albright, Medea Benjamin, Barbara Boxer, Carol Moseley Braun, Hillary Clinton, Gloria Feldt, Kim Gandy, Whoopi Goldberg, Dolores Huerta, Patricia Ireland, Carole King, Frances Kissling, Kate Michelman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Nancy Pelosi, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem, Kathleen Turner, and Maxine Waters.

(b) International Relations

In 1996 Turner was a signatory to a statement titled “A Call for Action on the U.N. Financial Crisis,” which implored America to funnel a large amount of money into the coffers of the United Nations:

“The UN faces collapse because many member states have not paid their full dues assessments, owed as a treaty obligation. On December 31, 1995, these debts totaled $2.3 billion. The organization will be completely out of cash in just a few months and may then be forced to close its doors. […]

“Several major countries facing deep economic difficulties–notably Russia and Ukraine–have not paid their full dues, though they have taken steps to catch up. But the largest debtor–the United States of America–has withheld UN assessments as a matter of policy and now owes over a billion dollars. The world’s richest country, host to UN headquarters, is pushing the UN to the brink of disaster.”

Other signers of the foregoing statement included such notables as David Cortright, Richard Falk, Phyllis Bennis, and Cora Weiss.

In September 1997, Turner announced that he was making a pledge of up to $1 billion to the United Nations Foundation over a ten-year period.[1]

In 2000, Turner offered to personally give the United Nations $34 million to cover the dues which the United States was late in paying. His money was rejected, however, because the U.N. charter strictly forbade the acceptance of donations that are not from member countries.

Despite the abject failure of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program, from which Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had skimmed an estimated $21 billion for himself during the late 1990s and early 2000s, Turner proposed giving the U.N. $62 billion per year to alleviate poverty around the world. As to the question of whether that money, too, might be misused or wasted, he said: “Would there be some corruption, would there be some money siphoned off? Of course there would. But there was money siphoned off at Enron and a lot of American corporations during the last few years, but we didn’t close down American business as result of it. We just try and reform and that’s just what you try and do.”

(c) Nuclear Disarmament

In 2000, Turner was a signatory to an anti-nuclear letter titled “An Appeal to End the Nuclear Threat” that appeared in The New York Times. The letter stated:

“The end of the Cold War has offered the most promising opportunity since the advent of nuclear arms in 1945 to free the world from nuclear danger. Instead we witness the spread of nuclear weapon technology and a deepening crisis of the nuclear arms control regime fashioned by both Republican and Democratic presidents.

“To take advantage of the new opportunity and ave rt the new perils, we call upon the United States government to commit itself unequivocally to negotiate the worldwide reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons, in a series of well-defined stages accompanied by increasing verification and control. As immediate steps along that path, we urge the global de-alerting of nuclear weapons and deep reduction of nuclear stockpiles.”

Other signers of that letter included Jimmy Carter, Walter Cronkite, Marian Wright Edelman, Martin Sheen, George Soros, and John Sweeney.

Turner also promoted nuclear disarmament through Ted Turner Documentaries, whose eight-hour television series about weapons of mass destruction, Avoiding Armageddon, aired on PBS stations in April 2003 and was hosted by Walter Cronkite.

In April 2005, Turner received the Alan Cranston Peace Award for his disarmament efforts and his environmental work. In his acceptance speech, Turner said: “I’m an abolitionist. I believe we ought to get rid of all [those weapons] as quickly as we can…. [Then] the next step is to preserve the environment.”

In 2001, Turner created the Nuclear Threat Initiative, whose aim was to prevent weapons of mass destruction from ever being deployed.

Anti-Christian

Turner has a long record of open hostility toward Christianity.

• In 1990 he told an audience at the American Humanist Association that “Christianity is a religion for losers.”
• At an event in February 1999, he suggested that the Ten Commandments were “a little out of date” and should be rewritten to eliminate the prohibition against adultery: “If you’re only going to have 10 rules, I don’t know if [prohibiting] adultery should be one of them.”
• He also said that the pope should “get with it. Welcome to the 20th century.” Turner then mocked the pontiff, who was Polish, by kicking his foot in the air and saying, “Ever seen a Polish mine detector?”

Turner, who describes himself as an atheist or agnostic, has characterized Christians who oppose abortion as “idiots” and “bozos.” One Ash Wednesday, he derided CNN employees whose foreheads were darkened with ashes as “a bunch of Jesus freaks” who “ought to be working for Fox [News].” Turner’s 2001 divorce from Jane Fonda was precipitated, in no small measure, by the fact that she had recently converted to Christianity. In an interview with New Yorker magazine, Turner stated: “I had absolutely no warning about it. She didn’t tell me she was thinking about doing it. She just came home and said, ‘I’ve become a Christian.’ Before that, she was not a religious person. That’s a pretty big change for your wife of many years to tell you. That’s a shock. I mean, normally that’s the kind of thing your wife or husband would discuss with you before they did it or while they were thinking about it … Obviously we weren’t communicating very well at that time.”

Comparing Rupert Murdoch to Hitler

Turner’s contempt for Fox News and its founder, Rupert Murdoch, is palpable. He once compared Murdoch to the “late Fuhrer,” Adolf Hitler, and later called Murdoch a “warmonger” because of his network’s supposedly positive coverage of the First Gulf War. Turner made these remarks when the size of Fox’s television audience began to overtake that of CNN, which prompted him to spin this development as “not necessarily a bad thing…. Adolf Hitler was more popular in Germany in the early ’30s than his people who were running against him. So just because you’re bigger, doesn’t mean you’re right.”

Praising Fidel Castro

A longtime admirer of Fidel Castro, Turner described the former Cuban president as “one hell of a guy.” In 2001 he told a class at Harvard Law School, “You’d like him [Castro]. He has been the leader of Cuba for 40 years. He’s the most senior leader in the world, and most of the people that are still in Cuba like him.”

Castro, in turn, had a high opinion of Turner — so much so that the dictator was the inspiration behind the creation of CNN International. As CNN News Chief Executive Eason Jordan told his audience during a 1999 lecture at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism:

“… Let me also thank Fidel Castro. In the earliest days of CNN, when CNN was meant to be seen only in the United States, the enterprising Fidel Castro was pirating and watching CNN in Cuba. Fidel was intrigued by CNN. He wanted to meet the person responsible. So Ted Turner, who at that point had never traveled to a Communist country or knowingly met a Communist, [went to Havana]. It was big deal for Ted and during the discussions Castro suggested that CNN be made available to the entire world. In fact it was that seed, that idea that grew into CNN International.”

Reluctant to Describe Saddam Hussein as “Evil”

Turner generally has been loath to condemn totalitarian tyrants such as Castro — a stark contrast to his frequent and passionate denunciations of American conservatives or Republicans like former President George W. Bush. When asked in 2000 whether he thought Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein could accurately be described as evil, Turner said: “I’m not sure that I know enough to be able to answer that question.”

After the U.S. military captured Saddam in December 2003, Turner said: “We’ve spent $200 billion destroying Iraq. Now we’ve got to spend $200 billion to rebuild it, if they’ll let us, and all to find a nut in a fox hole, one guy. He posed no threat to any of his neighbors, particularly with us there with overwhelming military superiority … it is obscene and stupid.”

Reluctant to Describe Islamic Terrorists as “Evil”

Turner is similarly reluctant to classify Islamic terrorists as evil. In February 2002, for instance, he visited his Brown University alma mater and said that the 9/11 hijackers had shown themselves to be “brave,” though probably “a little nuts.” “[T]he reason that the World Trade Center got hit,” he added, “is because there are a lot of people living in abject poverty out there who don’t have any hope for a better life.” Turner also took the opportunity to liken President George W. Bush to Julius Caesar.

Accusing Israel of Terrorism

In June 2002, Turner accused Israel of engaging in “terrorism” against Palestinians. “Aren’t the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorizing each other?” he asked. “The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s all they have. The Israelis — they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism.”

Defending Iraq, Iran, & North Korea

Before the Iraq War began in March 2003, Turner said, “I don’t know about you, but Iraq doesn’t bother me at all here in the United States. Neither do North Korea and Iran.” He derided President Bush’s infamous characterization of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran as constituents of an “axis of evil,” claiming that the latter two nations had just begun to be friendly toward America when Bush made what Turner viewed as his ill-advised remark.

On September 19, 2005, Turner, who had recently traveled to North Korea, appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room to discuss the fact that earlier that day, North Korea had agreed in principle to shut down its nuclear weapons program and rejoin the international non-proliferation treaty. In the course of his interview, Turner defended North Korean President Kim Jong Il in the following exchange with host Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: You spent some time recently in North Korea, Ted. Did this agreement come to you as a surprise?

TURNER: No. No. I talked with quite a few of the North Korean leaders and South Korean leaders, too, and spent really the most time with the head negotiator for North Korea. And I was really over there to try and persuade North and South Korea to make the DMZ into an international peace park when they sign a peace treaty, which I anticipate will be fairly soon, now that we have these six-party talks — we have agreement there.

But I had a great time. I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere. There’s really no reason — no reason for them to cheat or do anything to violate this very forward agreement. I mean, I think we can put the North Korea and East Asia problems behind us and concentrate on Iran and Iraq, where we still have some ongoing difficulties.

BLITZER: I have got to tell you, Ted, given the record of North Korea, especially the fact that, in the Clinton administration in ’93, ’94, they made a similar pledge, which they violated and they backed out of, I’m not exactly sure that I accept all your optimism.

TURNER: Well, you know, I was optimistic about the Cold War when I got to Russia, too. But I looked them right in the eyes. And they looked like they meant the truth. I mean, you know, just because somebody has done something wrong in the past doesn’t mean they can’t do right in the future or in the present. That happens all the — all the time.

BLITZER: But this is one of the most despotic regimes. And Kim Jong Il is one of the worst men on Earth. Isn’t that a fair assessment?

TURNER: Well, I didn’t get — I didn’t get to meet him, but he didn’t look — in the pictures that I have seen of him on CNN, he didn’t look too much different than most other people I have met.

BLITZER: But look at the way — look at the way he’s — look at the way he’s treating his own people.

TURNER: Well, hey, listen, I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin and they were riding bicycles, instead of driving in cars, but…

BLITZER: A lot of those people are starving.

TURNER: I didn’t see — I didn’t see any — I didn’t see any brutality in the capital or out in the — on the DMZ. We went — we visited, drove through the countryside quite a bit to get down to Panmunjom and Kaesong. We traveled around. I’m sure we were on a special route. But I don’t see that — there’s really no reason — North Korea has got enough problems with their economy and their agriculture. I think they want to join the Western world and improve the quality of life for their people, just like everybody — everybody else. And I think they’re — that we should give them another chance. It doesn’t cost us anything. We already have agreements.

BLITZER: Well…

TURNER: And then North Korea never posed any significant threat to the United States. I mean, the whole economy of North Korea is only $30 billion a year. It’s less than the city of Detroit. It’s a small place. And we do not have to worry about them attacking us.

BLITZER: You know, they have a million troops within literally a few miles…

TURNER: A half-a-million.

BLITZER: Well, they have — the best estimates are a million, a million troops along the DMZ.

TURNER: Yes. And we have a half-a-million troops, of which 28,000 are Americans. And they’ve been there for 50 years. One of the things I said in both North and South Korea is, it’s time to end the Korean War officially and move on and get those millions — or hundreds of thousands of young men that are sitting there back building hospitals and roads and schools in North and South Korea and improving the gross national product. It’s just a waste of time and energy for them just to sit there.

BLITZER: I think the bottom line, though, Ted — and I think you’d agree — they had this opportunity in the ’90s, when they signed this first agreement and they cheated. They didn’t live up to it. Now they have a second chance. I hope you’re right. I certainly do.

TURNER: Well, I hope I’m right, too. But you — you know, it’s — in the Bible, it says you are supposed to forgive seven times 70 or something like that. But just because — just because — you know, I mean, in 1940, the Germans were our enemies. For the last 50 years, they’ve been our allies. Same with the — the Russians were our enemies before ’91, when the Cold War ended.

BLITZER: I hope…

TURNER: Give them a break. Give them a break. And, besides, even if they do — even if they do threaten us again, the threat is nonexistent to the United States. They can’t threaten us. I mean, it’s like a flea attacking an elephant.

BLITZER: What about those ground-to-ground missiles that they have? And the CIA…

TURNER: They can’t reach us.

BLITZER: They can reach Japan. They can reach South Korea. They can reach a lot of our allies.

TURNER: They can’t reach the USA, and we can pound them into oblivion in 24 hours.

BLITZER: But you don’t want to get — you don’t want to get to that. There are some estimates, by the way, they could reach Alaska.

TURNER: Well, what, the Aleutian Islands? There’s nothing up there but a few sea lions.

At a September 19, 2006 news conference, Turner stated that the U.S. invasion of Iraq “will go down in history … as one of the dumbest moves that was ever made by anybody…. You don’t start wars just because you don’t like somebody.” Turner further characterized President Bush’s demand that Iran abandon its nuclear weapons program as “a joke.” “They’re a sovereign state,” Turner said of Iran. “We have 28,000 [nuclear weapons]. Why can’t they have 10? We don’t say anything about Israel—they’ve got 100 of them approximately—or India or Pakistan or Russia. And really, nobody should have them. They aren’t usable by any sane person.”

Turner used an April 2008 appearance on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show to claim that the insurgents who were then fighting U.S. troops in Iraq as “patriots” who simply “don’t like us [Americans] because we’ve invaded their country and occupied it.”

Global Warming

In 2006, Turner signed a statement that accompanied the documentary film The Great Warming, which maintained that not only did global warming pose a threat to the future of life on earth, but also that it was largely a result of human industrial activity. The statement read, in part: “The world’s scientists are in agreement: climate change is real, and we [humans] are largely responsible. America’s religious institutions, corporations, environmental and political leaders are in agreement — we must recognize our moral responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth today and for all future generations.” Other signatories included such notables as Brent Blackwelder, Robert Edgar, Kevin Knobloch, John Podesta, Carl Pope, Kathleen Rogers, Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, and Jim Wallis.

In April 2008, Turner made the unsubstantiated claim that within a few decades, most of humanity would be extinct as a result of global warming. Appearing on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show, he claimed: “We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten — not ten, but thirty or forty years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable.”

Blaming Terrorism on Bad Economic Conditions

In a September 16, 2005 appearance on NBC’s David Letterman Show, Turner mused about America’s war on terrorism, declaring: “You don’t stop terrorism with tanks, you stop it with giving people hope so they won’t want to blow themselves up.”

Population Control

In December 2010, Turner — a father of five who has publicly lamented having brought so many children into the world — called for a global policy that would penalize families for giving birth to more than one child. “If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,” he said. During a May 7, 2010 interview with National Public Radio, the media mogul praised the Chinese government for “wisely institut[ing] … the one-child family policy, … put[ting] in penalties, tax penalties and so forth, for people that have more than one child.”

Cheering the Rising Suicide Rate of U.S. Soldiers

In October 2012, Turner reacted positively to a report indicating that the suicide rate among U.S. soldiers had increased in recent months. In an appearance on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, Turner said: “I think it’s good [the suicide rate], because it’s so clear that we’re programmed and we’re born to love and help each other, not to kill each other, to destroy each other. That’s an aberration. That’s left over from hundreds of years ago. It’s time for to us start acting enlightened.”

Additional Information

In 2018, Turner announced that he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disease that affects thinking, movement, behavior, and sleep.

As of January 2024, Turner was America’s third largest landowner, possessing some 2 million acres in 9 U.S. states across the Southeast, the Great Plains, and the West.

As of March 2024, Turner was the owner of 45,000 bison across 14 ranches — the largest private herd of bison in the world.

As of March 2024, Turner was a member of Green Cross International‘s honorary board, along with such fellow notables as David Suzuki, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert Redford.

Also as of March 2024, Turner had a personal fortune of some $2.5 billion. This represented a sharp decline since 2001, at which time a devastating stock market collapse had slashed Turner’s fortune from $10 billion to $2 billion.

Footnotes:

1. As of September 2007, Turner had given only $655 million to the United Nations Foundation and its advocacy group affiliate, the Better World Campaign, both of which he chaired at that time. His failure to fulfill his pledge within the ten-year time frame a he had promised, was likely due to the fact that a devastating stock market decline had eroded Turner’s fortune, causing it to shrink from $10 billion to $2 billion.

Additional Resources:

Ted Turner, Castro’s Comrade
By Useful Stooges
September 17, 2015

Remaking Evangelicals In Ted Turner’s Image?
By Mark D. Tooley
May 14, 2009

Turner: KGB ‘Honorable,’ Iraq ‘Naked Aggression’ = USSR in Afghan
By Media Research Center
December 1, 2008

Ted Turner on Tavis: Touting Abortions and Detente, Trashing FNC
By Media Research Center
November 21, 2008

“Remarkable” Ted Turner
By Brent Bozell
April 9, 2008

Turner: Iraqi Insurgents ‘Patriots,’ Warming Inaction: Cannibalism
By Media Research Center
April 2, 2008

Turner Defends Jong, Treatment of People
By Media Research Center
September 20, 2005

Ted Turner: Tanks Don’t Stop Terrorism, “Giving People Hope” Does
By Media Research Center
September 19, 2005