Club screens preview of documentary on Ted Turner

The beauty of Ted Turner is that every time he heard “no,” he turned it into “on.” He turned every obstacle into an opportunity, even though he was told “no” every time.

That’s what Joni Levin, the producer of a six-part television series, told the National Press Club Friday, April 4, after members viewed an hour and 15-minute-preview of the series called “Call me Ted.” It looks at Turner’s life – not through rose-colored glasses – but exploring all of his foibles and flaws as he built an incredible business empire and became a major philanthropist and environmentalist.

“Audacious” was a word that came up again and again.

The video even had a cameo appearance of Turner at a 1994 Press Club luncheon with his wife at the time, Jane Fonda.

After the preview, Levin, with her husband Keith Clark, the documentary’s writer and director, were joined by Frank Sesno, the longtime CNN Washington Bureau Chief and anchor, to delve more deeply into what they had learned from Turner’s life.

It was moderated by Frances Hardin, a longtime Club member and former CNN White House correspondent.

The documentary aims to provide a comprehensive and honest portrayal of Turner's  life, the producers said. The series started as a 2 1/2 -hour production and just kept growing. The full series can be seen on Max, and a trailer can be seen here.

“He’s a big meal, and you just don’t short change that meal,” Clark said. “Yeah, there were a lot of self-inflicted wounds,” he said. “But he just rose, and he kept rising and rising.”

Turner did not try to edit the documentary, Clark said, and some of it was hard for him to watch. “He laughed and he cried, but he never asked us to change anything. He knew we had cemented his legacy.”

Turner wasn’t out to make money, but to change the world. That’s what CNN was all about – having a 24-hour news organization with bureaus around the world that would bring that factual news into homes everywhere.

In the early 2000s, he was approached by a Russian oligarch about creating a CNN for Russia, saying the country needed a CNN for Russian news. As they were closing the deal, Putin arrested the oligarch.

“Putin directly says, “I would suggest we don’t do this deal, because freedom of speech is a good thing in the West. But it doesn’t work here,’” Clark said.

Turner wanted an entertainment empire, and he nearly bankrupted the company time and again as he launched new ventures on cable and in sports. At one time, he was worth $10 billion, but he lost most of it in a bad deal with the merger of AOL and Time Warner, when he was forced out of directly controlling the company.

Yet he also became an early environmental leader, buying two million acres in ranches in the Western United States that will be turned into a national trust. He now has about 45,000 bison. He became committed to rescuing bison – all because as a nine-year-old boy he read in National Geographic that the they were going extinct.

And, he donated $1 billion to the United Nations Foundation to promote a more prosperous and just world.

Sesno, who became director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs after leaving CNN, said watching the preview was like watching his life. At GW, he said he was so inspired by what Turner had accomplished that he created the Ted Turner Professor of Environmental Media.

“We will teach in perpetuity, in Ted's name, young storytellers,” he said, “And it is to celebrate Ted's audacity and his spirit and his commitment to creative storytelling and to the human race and to the planet.”