Will new CNN ownership restore Ted Turner’s vision?

OPINION:

Media mogul and CNN founder Ted Turner died at 87 on Wednesday, and President Trump eulogized him on Truth Social.

“Ted Turner, one of the greats of all time, just died,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He founded CNN, sold it, and was personally devastated by the deal because the new ownership took CNN, his ‘baby,’ and destroyed it. It became woke, and everything that he is not all about.”

Mr. Trump called Turner a friend and “one of the greats of broadcast history” who was “always willing to fight for a good cause.”

The admiration was mutual in spirit, if not in politics. Despite their disagreements, Mr. Trump and Turner were kindred spirits.

Turner, like Mr. Trump, was known for his inflammatory statements, earning himself the nickname “Captain Outrageous.” The two rose to prominence around the same time. When Turner founded CNN in 1980, the future president was starting work on Trump Tower.

Turner seriously considered running for president during his marriage to movie star Jane Fonda. One can imagine an alternate universe in which a brash, media-savvy Turner upended the 2008 Democratic primaries the way Mr. Trump did to Republicans in 2016.

Yet in addition to their overlapping biographies, Mr. Trump and Turner also shared a disappointment with CNN as it has become.

Although Mr. Trump’s hostility toward the network is well known, Turner’s criticisms were more subtle.

In 2018, Turner told CBS that he wished CNN would focus less on politics.

It is difficult for conservatives to imagine today, but CNN was founded with lofty intentions. Twenty-four-hour news coverage promised to break out of the sound-bite-driven, excessively curated, nightly news hour and give viewers a broader, deeper perspective on world events.

For a while, it seemed to work. CNN’s round-the-clock coverage of Desert Storm was a genuine improvement on the brief Walter Cronkite segments Americans had depended on during the Vietnam War.

The idea of CNN performing a comparable act of patriotism is no longer even imaginable.

It may be that the 24-hour news experiment was doomed from the start. Instead of creating a more informed electorate, it created an electorate obsessed with sensationalism, addicted to outrage, and increasingly overwhelmed by the volume and content of news coverage.

The lack of original reporting to fill endless hours of airtime led to a heavier reliance on “analysis” and “commentary,” which told audiences not just the facts but also how viewers should feel about them.

As more networks launched round-the-clock coverage, they settled into ideological silos to attract different segments of the market, and any semblance of even-handedness went out the window.

Mr. Trump is old enough to remember the CNN Turner founded, the network defined by its competence, objectivity and global reach.

CNN once sold itself as the network that trusted viewers with facts. Over time, it became a network that tried to instruct viewers on what to think. That transformation damaged not only CNN but also trust in the American media itself.

Thankfully, CNN may be primed for a reset — and not a moment too soon.

Billionaire Trump ally David Ellison, who just held a dinner party honoring the president, will soon take over CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros.-Discovery.

Many conservatives hope the leadership change could steer the network away from the ideological activism that alienated millions of viewers in the first place. Mr. Trump alluded to exactly that in his Truth Social tribute to Turner, writing: “Maybe the new buyers, wonderful people, will be able to bring it back to its former credibility and glory.”

If the network truly wants a comeback under new ownership, then abandoning performative activism would be a good place to start. There would be no better way to honor Ted Turner’s memory than by rebuilding the credibility that once made CNN great.

• Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) is president of the League of American Workers and senior political adviser to Catholic Vote. He is a former senior adviser to President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance and a former Fox News commentator.