00:00When Ted Turner first launched CNN on June 1st, 1980, there was some eye-rolling and a lot of criticism
00:09and big questions about whether there was any way that a cable news network could compete with the big three
00:16networks, NBC, ABC, and CBS.
00:19Then came an iconic moment during the first Gulf War back in 1991, and it cemented CNN's role as a
00:27force to be reckoned with.
00:30This is, something is happening outside. Peter Arnett, join me here. Let's describe to our viewers what we're seeing. The
00:43skies over Baghdad have been illuminated. We're seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky.
00:51Joining me now is CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nick Robertson. Nick, you are in Islamabad, Pakistan right now.
00:59You joined CNN in 1990, and you were in Baghdad at that time with CNN's Bernard Shaw, whom we just
01:07heard, Peter Arnett, John Holloman, Robert Wiener, Ingrid Formanac, Tracy Haverland, Chris Minaj, and the legendary Mark Biello, a cameraman
01:18who I believe is his birthday today.
01:20That all happened. You were all together during that moment, the world shared.
01:28Yeah, and it was because of Ted, right? Because of his vision of what he wanted our CNN journalism to
01:35be.
01:36He inspired us because he wanted to get the news from the ends of the earth.
01:41He inspired us with his passion that, you know, if only we could tell the stories, we could bring people
01:48closer together, bring that understanding, bring world peace.
01:53And I think we all liked that. This was positive. And that's what had brought us there.
01:59And that moment and that broadcast we just had, that was all part of Ted Turner.
02:04We were broadcasting on a system that nobody had ever used in a situation like this before.
02:10It was an out-of-the-box idea. It was the legendary four-wire.
02:13But we came up with the idea and through Robert Wiener and through our bosses, Eason Jordan and Tom Johnson
02:20and Ted at the top of it all, go do it, spend the money, be over budget, make it happen,
02:27bring this in.
02:27And that's what we did. And then we brought the satellite dish in after that.
02:31And that was all because Ted gave everyone the space and opportunity and vision to imagine and do big and
02:38do good.
02:39I remember when I was first hired by CNN and I was just a young, wide-eyed engineer at the
02:46time.
02:46And I'd been covering the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall coming down and Ceausescu's overthrow in
02:53Romania.
02:54And CNN was having trouble getting its engineers into Romania.
02:57I was working for somebody else and they spotted me and they said, after this, come over to us, come
03:02talk to us.
03:03And I remember it was my first time to the United States and I'd obviously done a lot of research
03:09about CNN and I got Ted's vision.
03:12And it was like, this is who I want to work for. This is where I want to be.
03:16And I walked into the Omni Hotel in the CNN Center on the evening of Friday, the 26th of January,
03:241990.
03:24And you know who is sitting with his family having his dinner in the restaurant?
03:29That was Ted Turner. I kind of, I didn't really see him again.
03:34I was hired by the chief engineer the next day and back to London before I could turn around.
03:38And I don't think I saw Ted for 10 years or more than that.
03:43That was because we were going to the ends of the earth all the time to get the news.
03:47I met my wife because of Ted Turner.
03:50We were on the road together working for CNN, going into Baghdad during the war.
03:55Ted gave us the passion, the commitment to do that, the inspirational things we did.
04:01I remember not long after Ted had passed his pen, passed Johnson's pen, to Mikhail Gorbachev signing that letter.
04:11We did, CNN did a broadcast from Red Square.
04:14No one had ever done it before.
04:16I'm sorry, it's a helicopter flying by.
04:19This was Ted's vision to do what no one, he said.
04:23The idea was go live in Red Square, but not just one camera, four cameras, build a stage in the
04:28middle of Red Square.
04:29And it was Ted's relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev that allowed that to happen and gave the space to do this
04:37news and bring cultures together, reach across boundaries, reach across borders.
04:43You know, he inspired us to do that.
04:46He inspired us to go to the ends of the earth.
04:49He also inspired us to go into the jaws of danger.
04:52And we did that, and we did that willingly because he gave us that sense of commitment for good.
04:58We'd be in danger in bad places.
05:00It was for a good reason.
05:03And just real quick, when I first started here at CNN, we were not allowed to use the F word.
05:09And by the F word, I mean foreign.
05:11And that was a Ted Turner mandate.
05:18And I remember that, too.
05:19You couldn't say it in the newsroom.
05:21You know, if anyone said that, I think you had to put money in a jar.
05:26And obviously the money went to charity.
05:30There was a penalty for that.
05:32He so believed that it wasn't foreign.
05:35It was international.
05:37You know, and we bought that.
05:38And then, you know, when eventually we did start using that word again, like now, you sort of look over
05:45your shoulder because it was a different ethos.
05:49Yeah.
Comments