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                â                                                            ╚MAN OF THE YEAR, Page 24

TED TURNER

History as It Happens


Linking leaders as never before, CNN has changed the way the
world does its business.

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III -- With reporting by Anne Constable/
London, Michael Duffy/Washington and William Tynan/New York,
with other bureaus


     On the night that the bombs began to fall on Baghdad,
Gilbert Lavoie, press secretary to Canada's Prime Minister,
Brian Mulroney, telephoned his counterpart Marlin Fitzwater at
the White House. "Marlin said, `Hi, what are you doing?' "
Lavoie recalls, "and I said, `I'm doing the same thing you are
-- watching CNN.' "

    So was virtually every other senior official in virtually
every government. In that respect, at least, the night of Jan.
16, 1991, was actually rather ordinary. From Rome to Riyadh,
London to Lagos, Beijing to Buenos Aires, Cable News Network is
on more or less continuously in the suites of a vast array of
chiefs of state and foreign ministers. It has become the common
frame of reference for the world's power elite. Boris Yeltsin
and Mikhail Gorbachev, George Bush and Saddam Hussein -- the
headline sparring partners of the year just past -- are all
alert watchers. What a computer message can accomplish within
an office, CNN achieves around the clock, around the globe: it
gives everyone the same information, the same basis for
discussion, at the same moment. That change in communication has
in turn affected journalism, intelligence gathering, economics,
diplomacy and even, in the minds of some scholars, the very
concept of what it is to be a nation.

    Only a glint of thought to its founder, Ted Turner, a
dozen years ago, CNN is now the world's most widely heeded news
organization. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd insists on
staying only at hotels that carry the network. Iraqi ministers
Tariq Aziz and Nizar Hamdoon would not so much as lower the
volume of the nonstop CNN in the background while granting
interviews to John Wallach, foreign affairs editor of the Hearst
newspapers' Washington bureau -- not even, Wallach says, for the
network's Hollywood Minute. When the name of his country was
inadvertently omitted from a news quiz about nations
participating in November's Middle East peace talks, Jordan's
King Hussein was watching and was so irritated that he had
palace officials immediately call CNN's Amman office to
complain.

    Singapore stockbrokers protested their government's
politically inspired ban on private satellite dishes, arguing
that access to instantaneous war news on CNN was vital for
anticipating fluctuations in world financial markets. The
terrorists who held Terry Anderson hostage in Lebanon used CNN
as the vehicle to release a videotape of his appeal for help.
CNN can be seen at the El Kabir Hotel in Tripoli, favored by
Muammar Gaddafi's associates. It can also be seen at the
Vatican, where Archbishop John Foley, president of the
Pontifical Council for Social Communications, rises by 6 a.m.
to watch and "know what to pray about."

    CNN has become the fourth most respected brand name in the
U.S., according to a recent poll of 2,000 people, ranked just
behind the Disney parks, Kodak and Mercedes-Benz and ahead of
Rolex, Levi's, IBM and AT&T. (ABC, NBC and CBS were not offered
by the opinion seekers.) As a source of knowledge in turbulent
times, CNN may be without peer. "Ted Turner is probably the
pre-eminent publisher in America today, maybe in the world,"
says Don Hewitt, founding producer of 60 Minutes on CBS. "When
there was a disaster, it used to be that people went to church
and all held hands. Then television came along, and there was
this wonderful feeling that while you were watching Walter
Cronkite, millions of other Americans were sharing the emotional
experience with you. Now the minute anything happens they all
run to CNN and think, `The whole world is sharing this
experience with me.' "*

    For most of the gulf war, CNN was the prime source of
news, information and up-to-the-minute political intelligence
for the U.S. government. President Bush is known to have said
to other world leaders, "I learn more from CNN than I do from
the CIA." That is apparently not a joke. Secretary of State
James Baker and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney turned to CNN
to find out what was happening in diplomacy or combat because
its speed and accuracy in newsgathering outstripped the work of
the National Military Intelligence Center and the CIA. Those
agencies remain geared to cycling paperwork up through chains of
command at a pace often too slow during a fast-breaking crisis.

    President Kennedy had six days to ponder what to do before
he went public about the Cuban missile crisis. During the gulf
war, the White House rarely had six hours to respond and
sometimes felt it did not have six minutes. In the face of this
urgent need to know, whenever CIA Director William Webster
received word via intelligence satellite that an Iraqi Scud
missile had been launched, he would tell National Security
Adviser Brent Scowcroft, "Turn on CNN to see where it lands."

    Perhaps CNN's biggest impact has been on diplomacy. There,
too, the stately march of paper via protocol has been
supplanted by spontaneity and pragmatism. The public press
conference has outstripped the private letter. No longer is the
performance just for show, while the real deal is done behind
closed doors. CNN's reach makes it a kind of worldwide party
line, allowing leaders to conduct a sort of conference call
heard not only by the principals but also by their constituents
across the planet. Says Richard Haass, a National Security
Council aide to President Bush: "You end up hearing statements
for the first time, not in diplomatic notes, but because you see
a Foreign Minister on the TV screen. By television, I really
mean CNN. It has turned out to be a very important information
source."

    When U.S. troops invaded Panama in December 1989, the
Soviet Foreign Ministry read its condemnation to a CNN crew
before passing it through diplomatic channels. During the
buildup to the gulf war, Turkish President Turgut Ozal was
watching a CNN telecast of a press conference and heard a
reporter ask Bush if Ozal would cut off an oil pipeline into
Iraq. Bush said he was about to ask Ozal that very question.
Moments later, when the telephone rang, Ozal was able to tell
Bush that he was expecting the call.

    THE FINAL EFFORT AT A PEACE ful settlement of the gulf war
epitomized the transition from the old diplomacy to the new.
Secretary of State Baker met for six hours with Iraqi Foreign
Minister Aziz but could not persuade him to accept a manila
envelope containing a private letter from Bush to Saddam
Hussein. As the meeting ended, both sides readied press
conferences blaming each other. Aziz let it be known he would
wait for Bush to appear, thus having the last word. White House
press secretary Marlin Fitzwater quickly telephoned CNN
correspondent Charles Bierbauer. Tell your bosses in Atlanta and
your man with Aziz in Geneva, said Fitzwater, that Aziz is going
to have to speak first "if we have to wait until Christmas."
Bush won. Says Fitzwater: "The whole thing took about five
minutes to settle. CNN was the midwife on both ends."

    CNN has also become a kind of global spotlight, forcing
despotic governments to do their bloody deeds, if they dare,
before a watching world. Sometimes they dare not, especially
when CNN can reach even a relatively few citizens within the
oppressed land and serve as a beacon of freedom. During the
failed Soviet coup in August, as key state news organs were
being taken over by supporters of coup leaders, Russian
President Boris Yeltsin showed himself in public atop a tank to
rally a crowd nearby -- and a far larger one throughout his
nation. He knew that CNN might still be seen by about 100,000
Muscovites and thousands of residents in other cities, a tiny
percentage of the population but enough to spread word of mouth
that the battle for freedom was not lost. The image of a defiant
Yeltsin sent the same signal to the rest of the world and
heightened pressure on President Bush to denounce the coup.
Historians will debate how much impact this televised imagery
had on the outcome. But it is noteworthy that a diplomat
representing one of the newly independent Baltic republics
jubilantly called people at CNN days later and thanked them for
helping to give his country its freedom.

    The outcome is not always so positive. Although State
Department insiders tell how spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler
dragged Baker in to watch CNN footage of China's crackdown
against protesters in Tiananmen Square, the only measurable
political effect was to distance Baker a tad from the Chinese
leadership. Says a senior official, discussing the bloodshed's
being seen by the American people on CNN: "It demanded a
solution we couldn't provide. We were powerless to make it
stop.''

    In all these cases, many of the same gut-wrenching images
could be seen on other networks. But CNN was apt to carry them
first around the world and certainly to air them more frequently
and at greater length. Moreover, the very existence of CNN has
compelled rivals, inside and outside the U.S., to pursue more
international news and air more of it live.

    Among the most avid watchers of CNN, although they don't
always like to admit it, are other journalists. In almost every
major U.S. newsroom and in many elsewhere in the world, the
channel is perpetually on and someone is watching, or at least
glancing over frequently. Once upon a time, newspapers broke the
news to the public. Then TV took over that role, and ever
since, newspapers have tried to redefine themselves by becoming
more analytical. Now, even most TV reporters try to pride
themselves on doing a story analytically and in depth; it is a
foregone conclusion that CNN will do the story first.

    At many events it covers, from summits to celebrated
trials, CNN itself becomes a major news source. During the
Arab-Israeli peace conference in Madrid last November, where
access was severely limited, nearly all of the 4,600 journalists
had to follow the proceedings on CNN. A common temptation is to
skip other reporting and just rehash what shows up on the
screen. Sometimes even the most serious reporters are forced to
rely on CNN's better access. As retired Air Force General
Michael Dugan quipped about his work as military analyst for
CBS, "What CBS did during the gulf war was watch CNN." The same
might be said of most other broadcast and print news teams.

    The appeal of CNN has inspired would-be imitators. Japan's
NHK network explored creating a global channel but gave up when
it projected the costs at $800 million a year. The British
Broadcasting Corp. plunged ahead into the Asian market in a
joint venture with Hong Kong's richest businessman, Li Kashing.
Their satellite channel of news and soft features, one of five
on the nascent STAR-TV system, is reaching 38 Asian nations that
number half the world's population. But only about half a
million households actually own satellites, while an
indeterminate number of others get some part of the service
through broadcast channels. The programming is already popular
in India and other regions formerly a part of the British
Empire, and it is scheduled to be offered later in Africa and
even on CNN's home turf in North America; it already competes
with CNN on a small scale in Europe. BBC officials say their new
entry into the global-village sweepstakes offers more analysis,
more authoritative opinion and a broader world view. CNN
counters that it too has an international outlook, that its
reporting resources are more extensive and that world audiences
are keenly interested in the U.S., in every aspect from politics
to popular culture. Another potential competitor is the
still-evolving European Broadcast Union's news channel, taking
programs from 10 member nations -- albeit without the advantages
of a shared style or even a common language.

    Within the U.S., so far the Big Three networks have
struggled to keep up with CNN's newsgathering. But former anchor
Cronkite is fretful: "What I fear is that in their straitened
economic conditions, the networks will find CNN an excuse to
shuck some of their own responsibilities. I can conceive that
as the situation grows worse, the networks may say, `The public
is being served by CNN. We don't have to be there.' " That may
already be true. For the 1992 presidential nominating
conventions, only CNN has committed to gavel-to-gavel coverage.

    "CNN has put a tremendous strain on the print press," says
Thomas Winship, editor emeritus of the Boston Globe and a former
president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. "During
the past five years, print has been clobbered by television and
has generally failed to respond by emphasizing the analytic and
investigative stories that TV cannot do so well." Jim Hoagland,
a two-time Pulitzer prizewinner for his international coverage
in the Washington Post, says, "The effect of CNN should be to
persuade newspapers that the stenographic mode of reporting is
obsolete, a real dinosaur. The simple news account of an event
that much of our audience has already witnessed is no longer
sufficient. We've got to shift to a more analytical mode or find
the story that TV couldn't or didn't cover." The plight of
newspapers in a video age has rarely been more vivid than during
the early days of the gulf war and the Soviet leadership crisis.
News columns looked as though they had been put together simply
by watching CNN the night before. Analyses were interesting but
often nearly 24 hours out of date and no longer relevant.

    For some social theorists, CNN has become far more than a
news medium. It is considered prime evidence for the evolution
of McLuhan's borderless world. As corporations become
multinational and free trade transcends tariffs, as Europe
develops a single currency and other regions build spheres of
economic cooperation, as pop culture and air travel and
migration and, yes, television make the world psychologically
smaller, these theorists contend that the concept of nationalism
recedes. Says Joshua Meyrowitz, professor of communication at
the University of New Hampshire: "Many of the things that define
national sovereignty are fading. National sovereignty wasn't
based only on power and barbed wire; it was based also on
information control. Nations are losing control over
informational borders because of CNN."

    NOT EVERYONE LIKES CNN OR rates its influence so
positively. U.S. conservatives have complained for years about
its tolerant attitude toward erstwhile communist leaderships and
other dictatorships, which they see as a cynical ploy to assist
the network in doing business in those countries or as a boost
to Turner's personal ambitions as a world peacemaker. These
critics were appalled when Turner himself genially interviewed
Fidel Castro. They were outraged when CNN left reporter Peter
Arnett in place in Baghdad throughout the gulf war to convey the
Iraqi point of view. Some business executives also perceive
ardent environmentalism at CNN as another attitude encouraged,
if not imposed, by the ecology-minded Turner. More liberal
observers also question CNN's detachment. Washington Post
columnist Hoagland describes the network as responsible and fair
but adds, "It seems to me that they are probably more sensitive
to host-government reaction than most journalistic organizations
would be because of their approach of trying to be everywhere.
And it seems to me that they lean over backward to carry what
I think of often as non-news from countries where they clearly
want to be in that market." For example, he cites reports on
economic development from Central Europe that look like video
press releases about new factories.

    Scholars frequently belittle CNN for its unscholarly haste
and supposed shallowness. In place of slowly mulled research
from experts steeped in their field, CNN delivers raw news. It
features live events, bulletins and studios full of talking
heads, often with scant analysis. CNN came into being just as
the Big Three American networks were moving away from their
tradition of in-house experts, and the new network set the pace.
CNN anchors are apt to be more trained in the mechanics of
television than in the nuances of the many subjects they
discuss. The reporting ranks number mostly workaday generalists.

    CNN nonetheless does a good job on business, technology,
entertainment and sports and capably covers the White House and
U.S. politics. It can show great sensitivity in dealing with
racial and multicultural conflict and is attuned to the concerns
of women and gays. But its intellectual thinness is evident in
the way it covers foreign affairs -- with the same tired
emphasis on revolutions, wars, famines and disasters found in
the traditional half-hour nightly network news shows, despite
having the airtime to give a more rounded picture. An emphasis
on events rather than analysis may, however, be a factor in
CNN's broad appeal, argues G. Cleveland Wilhoit, professor of
journalism at Indiana University and associate director of the
university-wide Institute for Advanced Study. Says he:
"Ideological critics of the media, left and right, agree on one
thing -- that the press is too arrogant, too ready to tell
people what to think. By its very structure, CNN is populist.
It provides the raw materials of the story and lets the viewers
form their own opinions."

    The idea that CNN ought to be more analytic and
instructive is not universally held among government and
business leaders either. Many like the network just as it is.
Sir Bernard Ingham used to be the combative press secretary to
former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, herself so big
a fan of CNN that the network has made special arrangements for
her to get it at her office. Says Ingham: "I don't think we want
analysis. What we want is reporting of the facts. People can
form their own judgments. There are too damn many journalists
analyzing the news."

    A great deal of the criticism of CNN from outside the U.S.
seems to be rooted in general resentment of U.S. power and
influence. The network is often labeled as the latest example
of U.S. cultural imperialism. Longtime French TV news
correspondent Christine Ockrent calls CNN "a U.S. channel with
a global vocation, but which sees the world through an American
prism." She is dismissive of its most widely discussed
experiment, the weekly World Report, which airs unedited stories
taken from TV channels around the world. Says Ockrent: "Asking
Serbian television for its reading of the situation is not
providing world news but merely the Serbian version. When CNN's
footage is not homemade in the U.S., it is homemade in some
other country. That's not being international."

    BRAZIL'S FOREIGN MINISTER, Francisco Rezek, argues,
however, that CNN's bias is toward values the world ought to
emulate. "The network is markedly North American," he contends.
"But while a universal stage, a truly global network, would be
better, the American stage is the next best thing. There is no
nation that is so varied, that has such a mixture of cultures
and beliefs and that represents the two most important lessons
of this century -- pluralist democracy and open, competitive
economies. CNN helps strengthen democracy."

    CNN officials readily acknowledge that despite having a
round-the-clock schedule, the network does not explore most
topics deeply. Apart from its frequently lively and sometimes
informative talk shows, it remains a headline service, with a
high percentage of repetition and overlap. One of its two U.S.
cable channels, Headline News, offers an endlessly repeating
half-hour loop of updated news, sports, ecoand entertainment
bulletins. The other, the original CNN, mixes news hours with
other mass-appeal public-affairs formats. It does not aspire,
in any hour of its 24 a day, to the highbrow.

    Part of the reason CNN has survived its past economic
travails is Turner's go-for-broke nervelessness. Part is having
been, as Turner says, in the right place at the right time. Part
is the corporate willingness to gamble. When CNN executive Ed
("No Relation") Turner was interviewed by owner Ted, the
trickiest question was "Ed, are you a dreamer?" At nearly any
other company, the correct answer would be no. At CNN, it is
yes.

    But perhaps the largest factor in CNN's prosperity is,
paradoxically, sound business management. The network
demonstrated to its fat rivals that news could be delivered much
more cheaply. CNN's salaries were lower but its people were
hungrier and harder working. It did not get trapped into
make-work union rules. It pioneered the practice of cross
training, in which employees must learn and perform multiple
skills. It reduced the size of camera crews from four to two,
a standard that is now emulated throughout the industry.

    The most expensive thing CNN does is the most necessary to
its survival: broadcasting live and at length from remote
locations. Says London bureau chief David Feingold: "The whole
idea of journalism is to be a witness." The network pioneered
the use of costly "flyaway" satellite up links -- packages of
technology that can be disassembled into suitcase-size
components weighing less than 100 lbs. each and capable of being
checked as luggage onto an ordinary passenger jet. The trick is
not to let the technological capacity dominate the editors' news
judgment, not to do a story simply because one can. Explains
Paris bureau chief Peter Humi: "People expect CNN to have live
coverage. With today's technology, live is easier to do, and
it's sexy. Our aim is to get away from being a knee-jerk channel
and put in a little thought and judgment."

    In the style of the eminently quotable and confessional
Ted Turner, the freewheeling and frankly told adventures of CNN
have yielded entertaining books. Newly among them is Seven Days
That Shook the World, a story of the Soviet coup that hit the
stands in December, from CNN's corporate sibling, Turner
Publishing, with photos by the Soviet agency TASS and an
introduction by Hedrick Smith. Another recent book is the
disjointed but richly anecdotal Live from Baghdad (Doubleday;
$22), written by Robert Wiener, producer of CNN's wartime
coverage from Iraq. Wiener's final words are "To broadcast, for
the first time in history, live pictures to the entire world of
a war in progress from behind enemy lines. Murrow would have
loved it!"

    Indeed, Edward R. Murrow, himself a wartime broadcaster
from London rooftops, would have. And so did the whole watching
world. The sense of shared experience is the vital starting
place for building a consensus on every matter of global
concern, from nuclear disarmament to environmental cleanup, from
hunger to health care.

    What CNN viewers have seen in the past year is the
awakening of a village consciousness, a sense that human beings
are all connected and all in it together, wherever on the planet
they may be. How else to explain Kenyans who lined up six-deep
in front of electronics stores to watch footage of a war they
had no soldiers fighting in? The full potential of the medium
that televisionary Ted Turner bet the house on is just
beginning to be realized. What we are seeing is not just the
globalization of television but also, through television, the
globalization of the globe.