CNN Fires Rick Sanchez for Remarks in Interview About Jews and the Media

Rick Sanchez, a daytime anchor at CNN, was fired on Friday, a day after telling a radio interviewer that Jon Stewart was a bigot and that “everybody that runs CNN is a lot like Stewart.”

The latter comment was made shortly after Mr. Stewart’s faith, Judaism, was invoked.

CNN said in a statement Friday evening, “Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.”

Mr. Sanchez’s comments came Thursday during a contentious conversation with the comedian Pete Dominick on satellite radio. By Friday afternoon, a recording of the conversation had circulated widely on the Internet.

In the conversation Mr. Sanchez, who is Cuban-American, repeatedly suggested that he had experienced subtle forms of discrimination in his television career.

He said that “a lot of elite Northeast establishment liberals” viewed him as someone “who belongs in the second tier and not the top tier.”

Among those establishment figures, he said, was Mr. Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central and a friend of Mr. Dominick’s.

At first, Mr. Sanchez called Mr. Stewart a “bigot,” but later took the word back, calling the comedian “prejudicial” instead.

Prejudicial “against who?” Mr. Dominick asked.

Mr. Sanchez said, “Against anybody who doesn’t agree to his point of view, which is very much a white liberal establishment point of view.”

One of the co-hosts of the radio show brought up the fact that Mr. Stewart was a Jew, saying to Mr. Sanchez that he was a minority “as much as you are.”

Mr. Sanchez answered sarcastically, “Yeah. Yeah. Very powerless people.” He let out a high-pitched laugh.

“Everybody that runs CNN is a lot like Stewart,” Mr. Sanchez said. “And a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.”

Mr. Stewart has made jokes about Mr. Sanchez more than 20 times in the last five years, according to a search of the show’s Web site. Or as Mr. Sanchez put it, “You watch yourself on his show every day and all they ever do is call you stupid.”

Mr. Stewart was far from the only person known to mock Mr. Sanchez, who was once tasered on camera for a segment on CNN. He was a polarizing figure within CNN, but under the channel’s former president, Jonathan Klein, he was rewarded with more air time, most recently a two-hour block in the afternoons. Mr. Klein was fired last week.

On Wednesday, Mr. Sanchez ended two months as an interim prime-time anchor. He appeared on the radio show as part of tour to promote his book “Conventional Idiocy.” Attempts to reach Mr. Sanchez were unsuccessful.

//NEW YORK  TIMES

What’s Al Jazeera’s problem?

Photo: Al Jazeera English

Since its launch in 2006, Al Jazeera English has expanded into more than 190 million households in more than100 different countries, including most of Europe and even Israel. But its sister station, Al Jazeera Arabic, became notorious in the U.S. after broadcasting communiques from Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11, and the network has never managed to break free of that reputation and into the U.S. market. Perhaps because it’s something of a forbidden fruit, the network is an endless source of fascination for the American media. Need to Know sat down with Al Jazeera English host Riz Khan at the Creative Leadership Summit in New York to ask the BBC and CNN-veteran if there’s really anything to be afraid of.

“God bless America for being a very comfortable country, but people here become complacent because they don’t have to worry about what’s happening elsewhere.”

Lauren Feeney: Two Al Jazeera journalists were arrested in Afghanistan last week on suspicion of having some affiliation with the Taliban.

Riz Khan: You know, you have to forgive me on that, I really don’t know the story because I’ve been stuck up here doing my own shows at the U.N. and haven’t had much time. But tell me what you heard.

Feeney: What I heard is that a staffer and a freelancer were arrested by NATO forces and that there was a suspicion that they were collaborating with the Taliban. But Al Jazeera was denying that, saying that they spoke both with members of the Taliban and of course people within the coalition forces, both as sources.

Khan: I don’t know about the specific case, but I can tell you that it’s never easy being a journalist, especially in conflict zones where there’s always suspicion around those who are not directly involved in managing the conflict. Especially with the military, they’re always ultra-cautious and ultra-weary of everyone. So it’s not surprising that something would happen. In many cases, journalists are considered to have an agenda. The team I work with has a pretty clear agenda, which is that we’re working with facts and figures.

Feeney: What’s the difference between Al Jazeera and other news networks you’ve worked for?

Khan: You know, the irony is, there’s more in common than there is difference. I was with the BBC, then with CNN, helped launch BBC World Service TV and the relaunch of CNN International, and then the launch of Al Jazeera English — and so many of my co-workers have been with all three. It’s not like somebody goes to a new company and suddenly becomes a different person. But the thing is that people watch with baggage. People think, if I’m watching my channel, I’m getting my views validated. So they watch Fox because they agree with what Fox is promoting. Or they may watch Hezbollah TV because that’s the particular view that they like. It’s very hard to get people to see things in a neutral way.

Even though BBC World, CNN and Al Jazeera share so much in common, the difference really lies in, well, a) CNN is a commercial channel where the other two are not; but the other thing is that Al Jazeera is the first channel that’s international, 24-hour, global news that’s not out of a Western center, that’s not headquartered in New York, Washington, London or somewhere else like that. And that immediately makes it different, and, ironically, from our very western point of view, makes people skeptical. But those who watch it — and this is the great vindicating factor — then judge for themselves, and I cannot say I’ve had negative feedback from anyone, which is kind of interesting.

My show is what I call very democratic TV, in that I invite viewers’ questions — I invite people to come in and ask questions directly to this president, that prime minister, this ambassador, this foreign minister, this celebrity — and the beauty of that is there is no agenda.

Feeney: The Washington Post recently reported that Pacifica Radio was considering broadcasting Al Jazeera but there was a fear that it wouldn’t sit well with their Jewish listeners. What do you say to that?

Khan: It’s kind of interesting because Al Jazeera Arabic, which was launched in 1996, was the first channel to feature Israelis to an Arab audience. Many of the Arab channels, traditionally, have never spoken to Israelis — they don’t recognize Israel, the maps don’t have Israel on them, so they don’t tend to feature Israelis or give an Israeli point of view, and Al Jazeera was the first to do that. With us, we don’t have any agenda — my team is mixed; I have people with family in Israel, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Christian — a real mix of people. I think if they listen — I mean, people who listen to us want to be informed about the world around them — I think if they listened to it, I don’t think they’d have any problem.

The carriage issues we’ve had in the U.S., they’ve been partly our own in terms of not being commercially strong minded. We’re not a commercial channel so we don’t go out and sell ourselves the way we should. But we’re also talking about a market which doesn’t have that much interest in international news. BBC World News had the same issue. I mean BBC America is a lot of happy programming as well as a bit of news, but CNN International when I was there never really had any traction in the U.S. We were told there’s no commercial foundation for it. I disagree. I think that Americans, when given information, do soak it up — you know Americans who watch it, or Americans who travel oversees, get this wide-eyed “oh, there’s a whole world out there what have I been missing all this time.” And you have a huge ex-pat population of just about everyone — I walk down the streets in D.C. and have the taxi drivers who are anything from Eritrean, Ethiopian, Somali, say, “Hey, we watch your channel, you cover Africa.” I think the issue is more with awareness rather than content, so that’s the sad part.

Feeney: What effect do you think the 24-hour news stations have had on the public’s understanding of the world, and what do you think of their politicization here in the U.S.?

Khan: You know, it’s sad — God bless America for being a very comfortable country, but people here become complacent because they don’t have to worry about what’s happening elsewhere. Those who live in small countries, who are affected by floods, disasters, border conflicts, refugees and so on — major issues that drive their day-to-day agenda — they tend to be much more receptive to international news.

I think America needs to know where its tax dollars are being spent — when it comes to pumping it into military conflicts, whether you agree or disagree, you need to know what’s being done by the government; and people have to hold their governments accountable through being educated, educated as voters. That’s what America is, it’s a democracy, so that’s important. Plus, it helps to build tolerance. If people know about the world around them they develop a sense of tolerance. The crazy stuff we have like the argument over the Park 51 mosque at Ground Zero — this level of debate shouldn’t be happening. At least not at an emotional level. It should be a smart reasoning, saying, OK, how do we balance the sensitivity that’s needed with the freedom of expression that America’s so famous for? These kinds of issues have to be debated, but from an educational point of view, and that’s what I think television like ours can do.

\\PBS

CNN reporter: Network censored footage of Iraq ‘war crime’

A former CNN Iraq correspondent suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder says his employers wouldn’t run footage he filmed of what he describes as a war crime by US troops, an Australian news source reports.

Michael Ware, who covered Iraq for CNN from 2006 until last year, describes the incident as “a small war crime, if there is such a thing.”

In 2007, Ware was with a group of US soldiers in a remote village in Iraq that was under the control of al Qaeda militants. Ware says there was a teenage boy in the street carrying a weapon for protection.

‘‘(The boy) approached the house we were in and the (US) soldiers who were watching our backs, one of them put a bullet right in the back of his head. Unfortunately it didn’t kill him,’’ Ware told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as quoted at the Brisbane Times.

Ware said his footage of the incident was deemed “too graphic” by CNN bosses to be placed on the air.

The Brisbane Times quotes Ware:

We all spent the next 20 minutes listening to his tortured breath as he died.

I had this moment … that I realized despite what was happening to this man in front of me, I’d been more concerned with the composition of my (photo) shot than I was with any attempt to either save him or at the very, very least ease his passing.

I indeed had been indifferent as the soldiers around me whose indifference I was attempting to capture.

Ware became “obsessed” with the footage of the incident, playing it repeatedly, said John Martinkus, a journalism teacher at the University of Tasmania and a friend of Ware’s.

“Part of him was like, ‘How could I just stand by and watch that happen?’ It was a really horrible, stark moral choice that he faced and he still wrestles with that,’’ Martinkus said.

Ware says the footage belongs to CNN and he can’t release it himself.

The Australian citizen returned to his native Brisbane last December to recover from the trauma of nearly a decade in war zones (he covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Time prior to moving to CNN.)

Members of his family say he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and endures “nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia and mood swings,” according to the Brisbane Times.

Ware was reportedly kidnapped during his stint as a war correspondent. In the incident, recounted at Men’s Journal, he was grabbed by followers of the al Qaeda warlord Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

They dragged Ware into an anonymous building in Baghdad, hung up a banner, and were preparing to tape his execution with his own camera — until an Iraqi friend of his, a former Baathist, insisted they spare his life. “I didn’t leave my hotel room for three days after that,” he said. “I was nauseated for weeks.”

Ware thus became “the only Westerner to be captured and later released by Al Qaeda in Iraq,” reports ABC in Australia.

The CNN correspondent has been known for occasionally stepping into controversy. In 2006, he aired partial footage of militants stalking and killing US troops, prompting then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to declare that “CNN has now served as the publicist for an enemy propaganda film.”

In 2007, some bloggers accused Ware of disrupting a Baghdad press conference by Sen. John McCain, who at the time was gearing up for a White House run. Ware denied the allegation, and Raw Story reported that video evidence backed up Ware’s denial.

\\RAW STORY

“Fox News: distorting, not reporting” – CNN

CNN ad responds to Fox ad’s false claim: “Fox News: distorting, not reporting”

The death of news credibility

I’ve been watching the steady decline of journalism since the Internet began replacing print and television as the main provider of news, with a seething disgust.

Today’s CNN top story put me over the edge.

Here’s the title and article summary for those of you without images in their feed readers:

6-year-olds forced into sex for food, group finds

A poor Haitian girl could get $2.80 and some chocolate, she told a European charity. All she had to do was perform a sex act on a humanitarian worker. She refused. Her impoverished friends did not. Her story is one of many in a report titled “No One To Turn To” — which chronicles allegations of charity and U.N. workers abusing children.

But if you read the actual article you see not a story about a 6-year-old being raped, but the following:

In the report, “No One To Turn To” a 15-year-old girl from Haiti told researchers: “My friends and I were walking by the National Palace one evening when we encountered a couple of humanitarian men. The men called us over and showed us their penises.

“They offered us 100 Haitian gourdes ($2.80) and some chocolate if we would suck them. I said, ‘No,’ but some of the girls did it and got the money.”

This bait-and-switch is so misrepresentative as to be grotesque. The story changes from “Humanitarian workers pay teenagers for sex” to the more sensationalist “6-year-olds forced into sex for food.”

The biggest problem with news being disseminated online is that there is no geographic isolation (as is the case with both print and tv), which means that every local news network is in competition with every other news site on the planet. Ratings are driven by attracting as large an audience as possible… and most people care more about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s married life than how many people vanished from a Darfur town this week (hint: all 30,000).

(Continue reading: Aviary)

Fox News is in for a very rough 2008

by Eric Boehlert

My guess is that Fox News guru Roger Ailes has been reaching for the Tums more often than usual early in the New Year, and there are lots of reasons for the hovering angst.

Let’s take an extended multiple choice quiz. Right now, which of the following topics is likely causing the discomfort inside Ailes’ Fox News empire?

A) CNN’s resurgence as the go-to cable destination for election coverage.
B) The incredible shrinking candidacy of Fox News’ favored son, Rudy Giuliani.
C) The still-standing candidacy of Fox News nemesis and well-funded, anti-war GOP candidate Rep. Ron Paul.
D) The Democratic candidates’ blanket refusal to debate on Fox News during the primary season.
E) Host Bill O’Reilly being so desperate for an interview from a Democratic contender that he had to schlep all the way to New Hampshire, where he shoved an aide to Sen. Barack Obama and then had to be calmed down by Secret Service agents.
F) Former Fox News architect and Ailes confidante Dan Cooper posting chapters from his a wildly unflattering tell-all book about his old boss. (“The best thing that ever happened to Roger Ailes was 9/11.”)
G) The fledgling Fox Business Network, whose anemic ratings are in danger of being surpassed by some large city public access channels.
H) Host John Gibson’s recent heartless attacks on actor Heath Ledger, just hours after the young actor was found dead.
I) Fox News reporter Major Garrett botching his “exclusive” that Paul Begala and James Carville were going to join Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, and then refusing to correct the record.

I’d say it’s A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. (I doubt Gibson’s grave-dancing or Garrett’s whopper caused Ailes a moment’s concern.)

Bottom line is that Fox News is in for a very rough 2008. And the umbrella reason for that is quite simple: Eight years ago the all-news cable channel went all-in on the presidency of George Bush and became a broadcast partner with the White House. Proof of that was on display Sunday night, January 27, during Fox News’ prime-time, “Fighting to the Finish,” an “historic documentary” on the final year of Bush’s presidency. Filmed in HD and featuring “unprecedented access,” according to the Fox News press release, the show was pure propaganda. (I must have missed Fox News’ “Fighting to the Finish” special back in 2000, chronicling the conclusion of President Bill Clinton’s second term and his “extraordinarily consequential tenure.”)

The point is that Fox News years ago made an obvious decision to appeal almost exclusively to Republican viewers. The good news then for Fox News was that it succeeded. The bad news now for Fox News is that it succeeded.

Meaning, when the GOP catches a cold, everybody at Fox News gets sick. As blogger Logan Murphy put it at Crooks and Liars, “Watching FOXNews getting their comeuppance has been fun to watch. They made their bed, now they’re having to lie in it and it’s not too comfortable.”

The most obvious signs of Fox News’ downturn have been the cable ratings for the big primary and caucus votes this year, as well as the high-profile debates. With this election season generating unprecedented voter and viewer interest, Fox News’ rating bumps to date have remained underwhelming, to say the least.

For instance, on the night of the big New Hampshire primary, CNN, which habitually trails behind Fox News in the prime-time race, attracted nearly 250,000 more viewers than its top competitor, marking a changing-of-the-guard of sorts.

The turnaround was striking when you consider that in 2004, even with no Republicans running against Bush, Fox News was still able to draw 200,000 more viewers than CNN on the night of the New Hampshire Democratic primary. Yet in 2008, with a very competitive GOP field, CNN was the ratings winner from New Hampshire.

And just look at the ratings for January 19, which featured returns from the Nevada caucus coming in during the late afternoon, and then fresh returns from the South Carolina Republican primary being posted during prime time that night. In the past, Fox News would have absolutely owned that night of coverage, as conservative news junkies flocked to their home team — Fox News — to see the results. But no more. CNN grabbed nearly just as many prime-time viewers for the Republican South Carolina returns as did Fox News.

The problem for Fox News is that it’s the Democratic race that’s creating most of the excitement, yet Fox News has been forced to mostly watch the race from the sidelines. That’s because last winter, after Fox News tried to smear Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for purportedly attending a radical Muslim school as a child, liberal bloggers launched an initiative to get Democratic candidates to boycott a debate co-sponsored by Fox News and the Nevada Democratic Party. (The boycott, powered by Foxattacks.com, was later extended to any and all Fox News debates.)

The point of the online crusade was not to simply embarrass Fox News or rattle Nevada Democrats for being out of touch with the grassroots masses that distrusted and despised Fox News. The point, instead, was to begin chipping away, in a serious, consistent method, at Fox News’ reputation. To spell out that Fox News was nothing more than a Republican mouthpiece and that Democrats need not engage with the News Corp. giant.

The lack of Democratic debates for Fox News has meant a huge setback for the news organization from a ratings perspective. Just look at the grand slam CNN hit last week when, on January 21, it broadcast the much-talked-about Democratic debate from South Carolina. The CNN event not only creamed Fox News in the ratings, nearly tripling its audience that night, but the debate set a new cable news mark for the most viewers ever to watch a primary debate.

In fact, of the 10 most-watched debates this election season, Fox has aired just two, compared to CNN’s five. Of the 10 most-watched debates, six have featured Democrats; four Republicans.

CNN is virtually guaranteed another monster ratings win this week with a pair of high-profile debates staged in California — the Republicans on Wednesday night and Democrats on Thursday.

No wonder CNN’s so giddy these days. Here’s the spin CNN president Jonathan Klein put out following its New Hampshire ratings win: “There’s a freshness and exuberance to our coverage that the others just aren’t matching. … Fox almost seems downright despondent in their coverage.”

So I’m not the only one who feels like Fox News coverage, especially of the Republican field, often feels like a televised wake. Or maybe that’s just been Fox News’ collective, subconscious mourning of the Giuliani campaign.

After all, Sean Hannity serves as Fox News’ official ambassador to the Giuliani campaign; a campaign that Ailes and Fox News were hoping to ride back into the White House. Yet despite showering Giuliani with all kinds of laudatory coverage, both Hannity and Ailes have been powerless, as they’ve watched Giuliani’s rudderless campaign go nowhere for months.

Even an all-out Fox News marketing blitz to label Giuliani “America’s Mayor” never got traction. In fact, it ranked right up there with the launch of New Coke, in terms of branding success. (Watch this clip to see the Fox News absurdity up-close.)

In the meantime, the rise of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and especially Mike Huckabee, with his populist streak, has caused all sorts of consternation at Fox News. Even the conservative Weekly Standard took notice. The magazine recently wrote that “A lot of conservatives have problems with both Huckabee and McCain. Last night on Fox, for example, Sean Hannity could barely conceal his distaste for both pols.”

And don’t even mention Ron Paul’s name to the folks at Fox News, who have stepped outside their role as journalists to try to kneecap the anti-war GOP candidate. The most blatant slap came right before the New Hampshire primary, when Fox News refused to include Paul in a televised GOP debate, despite the fact that just days earlier Paul grabbed 10 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus, nearly doubling the tally Giuliani posted.

Paul’s Republican supporters became so incensed by the snub that they literally chased Sean Hannity through the New Hampshire night chanting “Fox News sucks!” and captured the scene in a homemade clip that really has to be seen to be believed. (To recap New Hampshire for Fox News: Hannity was pursued by a Republican mob, O’Reilly got into a shoving match with an Obama aide, and CNN grabbed more viewers. Now that’s a week to remember!)

Oh, and we can’t forget the wildly hyped launch of the Fox Business Network, which, News Corp. execs bragged, would dethrone longtime cable business news champ CNBC. Of course, that might happen one day. But the early ratings for Fox Business Network have been unbelievably weak.

After two months on the air, Fox Business Network, available in 30 million homes, was attracting, on average, just 6,300 viewers on any given weekday, according to Nielsen Media Research. That was good for a nearly invisible .05 rating. (By comparison, CNBC during that period was attracting 265,000 viewers.)

Making matters worse for Ailes was the fact that on January 22, as fears mounted about a possible global financial crisis, CNBC posted its best ratings in seven years, attracting 401,000 viewers that day.

The hurdle for Fox Business Network has always been simple: Why would investors and day traders in search of reliable business information turn from CNBC over to the Fox brand, which is so well-known for passing along one-sided information? News Corp. always assumed Fox News would help launch the business channel. But Fox News is taken seriously by so few people, it may be hurting the business launch.

After all, Fox News continues to embarrass itself with a type of journalism that nobody else in the industry would dare call professional. And for proof of that look no further than Major Garrett, who is supposed to be one of the channel’s nonpartisan, serious journalists. He landed a recent scoop about how former advisers to Bill Clinton, Paul Begala and James Carville, were getting set to join Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Carville immediately shot the story down, telling Talking Points Memo’s Greg Sargent that very same day, “Fox was, is and will continue to be an asinine and ignorant network. I have not spoken to anyone in the Clinton campaign about this. I’m not getting back into domestic political consulting.”

Begala did Carville one better and directly emailed Garrett to deny the story — a story Garrett never bothered trying to check with Begala or Carville before it was broadcast. Garrett’s response to Begala’s blanket denial? Garrett told the Democratic operative that he would take his denial “under advisement.” [Emphasis added.]

Garrett then went back on the air and repeated the same story, and added the fact that Begala had been on a conference call the day before with Clinton advisers, which was also false. And no, despite his earlier email exchange with Begala, Garrett never bothered to try to confirm the conference call story with him before reporting it on Fox News.

On his Fox News blog, Garrett did acknowledge the Begala email and claimed he’d be updating the fast-moving story soon — which, he told readers, would likely be confirmed the next day when the Clinton campaign made the Begala/Carville announcement. But the next day when the story imploded, Garrett simply ignored the embarrassing gaffe.

Recounting the whole Kafka-esque charade at the Huffington Post, Begala wrote, “I’ve never had a more surrealistic day. If this is what one of Fox’s best and most respected reporters is doing, what are the hacks up to?”

They’re watching CNN capture the campaign ratings crown.

UPDATE: Fresh Nielsen numbers show Fox News’ ratings woes continued over the weekend. During Saturday night’s 8-10 p.m. ET coverage of the Democrats’ South Carolina primary results, Fox News not only got trounced by CNN among viewers 25-54, but lost to MSNBC as well.

via//Media Matters

FP: Seven Questions: Ted Turner on the Future of the Planet

Nearly three decades ago, he pioneered 24-hour news. Now he’s trying to save the world—and make money doing it. In this week’s Seven Questions, entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner talks about the United Nations, the death of newspapers, and why climate change offers “the greatest business opportunity that has ever come along.”

 

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty Images News

The optimist: Ted Turner says that “failure is not an option” in the fight against climate change.
FOREIGN POLICY: You’ve been a big backer of the United Nations, and you’ve put your money where your mouth is by funding the United Nations Foundation. As an entrepreneur, give me your best elevator pitch saying why the United States, the most powerful country in the world, needs the U.N. at all.

Ted Turner: As big and as powerful as we are, we can’t do it alone. The United States is only about 5 percent of the world’s population and is responsible for 25 percent of its carbon emissions. But there’s 75 percent [for which] we’re not. [When it comes to] global warming and war and peace and global refugees and the oceans and human rights, we have to have the U.N. to do those things because we’re not just set up to do it.

FP: How do you think Ban Ki-moon is doing, compared with his predecessor as U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan?

TT: I think Kofi Annan did a great job, and I think Ban Ki-moon is doing an absolutely magnificent job. We are very, very fortunate to have Ban in there now and [to] have had Kofi Annan for the previous 10 years. We’ve been very fortunate to have very constructive, creative leadership, because right now, humanity is facing the greatest dangers we have ever faced.

FP: You’ve spoken about climate change as a huge market opportunity. So in what technologies should a budding entrepreneur be investing his or her money? Where are you placing your bets?

TT: It’s going to cost trillions of dollars to rework the energy sources all over the world. We’re going to have to move away from fossil fuels. Even if we didn’t have greenhouse gases, we’re going to have to move away from fossil fuels as we’re going to run out. They’re finite, whereas solar and wind are infinite. Once we tap into them, we have a continuous renewable source of energy. What we need to have is a clean source of energy. In the United States, the incidences of asthma are up 100 percent in the last 120 years. We’re poisoning ourselves with all these gases. Solar and wind energy are a win-win situation. We get energy independence, which we desperately need to have. We’re transferring our wealth right now in massive amounts to the most unstable parts of the world that happen to have oil.

I have an interest in a solar-panel installation and design company in New Jersey, and I would like to invest more. Right now, it’s not like clean renewable energy has just been discovered; it’s been discovered over the last few years, and it’s the next hot investment opportunity. The companies that have the best prospects are selling at very high multiples. Anybody who wants to invest in the field had better study it very carefully and invest as wisely as possible. This is the greatest business opportunity that has ever come along. It’s truly global. We have to phase out all the coal-burning plants all over the world. We have to come up with new fuels for transport, biofuels probably. This is big.

FP: How do you get the politics of climate change in the United States to the point where a member of Congress from Toledo is scared to vote against, say, a carbon tax or a global cap-and-trade system to replace the Kyoto Protocol? Because we’re not there yet, are we?

TT: It’s going to be less so now. It’s been hard with the [Bush] administration. There are a number of energy bills going through Congress, and I think that Congress is a lot more amenable to listening to suggestions and studying the issues and getting familiar with them. The administration is moving a little bit, but they’ve always been holding back on this issue, disappointingly.

If we end up doing nothing or not enough, we’re facing very, very difficult times. In fact, we’re in difficult times right now. Down here in Atlanta, we’re running out of water. We have the worst drought in history in this part of the country. It’s almost unbelievable.

FP: As a philanthropist, does it frustrate you that you can’t make policies? Without government, are you just nipping at the margins?

TT: I’m frustrated a lot, but we can’t give up and get discouraged. We have to keep pressing on. I was good friends with Captain [Jacques] Cousteau. I told him one time in the Amazon, doing a series down there on [Cousteau’s boat] the Calypso, I said, “Captain, I’m kind of discouraged.” He said, “Ted, we cannot afford to get discouraged, even if we knew that we were going to lose. Which we don’t. What can men of good conscience do but keep trying until the very end?” And whenever I tend to get discouraged, I think of those words and I press on. Failure is not an option here. We’re talking about the survival of the human race, as well as all the other critters we share the planet with—the elephants and the pandas and the polar bears.

FP: What do you think of Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize? Does it help the fight against climate change, or does it turn it into more of a partisan issue in the United States?

TT: It’s going to help. Al Gore didn’t get it because he’s a Democrat. He got it because he is a good guy who’s smart as a whip. He sees ahead. And he’s made a great contribution. Every little bit helps. CNN is running a major series next week entitled Planet in Peril. It would have been a title that I would have been proud to have when I was there. It’s strong language, when you say “in peril.” Iran does not put us in peril like global warming does.

FP: Newspapers are struggling to find revenue streams, and major papers such as the Boston Globe have laid off a lot of foreign correspondents. Does that worry you? What do you think newspapers need to do to stay afloat today?

TT: I’m sorry about newspapers, but in all fairness, I predicted this 25 years ago when I started CNN. Newspapers are technologically obsolete. In the days of instant electronic communications, it’s crazy to have to print these newspapers at a central plant and deliver them by truck. They’re the biggest problem with our solid-waste disposal. And the news you get is a day old. You can get it off the Internet instantaneously for a fraction of the cost. Maybe there will still be the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and some people will subscribe, but I’m afraid newspapers are riding off into the sunset. I’m 68 and a half years old; I grew up with newspapers; I love newspapers; I love the news business. I started CNN; I’m a journalist and proud of it. I hate to see it happen. But if you’re not technologically up to date, you’re dead. They’re coming up with new stuff all the time.

Ted Turner is founder of CNN and chairman of Turner Enterprises.

Source: Foreign Policy