Turner alumni, luminaries celebrate the mogul at private Atlanta memorial

CNN reporters, executives and other Turner Broadcasting alumni gathered in Atlanta on Wednesday to honor the legacy of the late Ted Turner, emphasizing the importance of fulfilling Turner’s legacy by fighting for editorial independence, as the empire he built heads toward another multibillion-dollar merger.

The event was held at the Techwood campus in Midtown and beamed to all Warner Bros. Discovery employees across the globe. Speakers included anchor Wolf Blitzer, former CNN President Tom Johnson and current CEO Mark Thompson, with anchor Anderson Cooper playing host to the event. The memorial was not open to the public or other press, though it was covered by CNN. A public memorial will be held at a later date, a spokesperson for Turner Enterprises confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“We should thank Ted and remember him forever,” said Thompson, who took the helm of CNN in 2023. “This is the house Ted built, his podium, his house, and the best thing we can do is strive to ensure that this great house continues to stand strong and proud.”

Turner died May 6 at 87 after a period of declining health.

The main theme discussed Wednesday was Turner’s adherence to the major tenets of the free press: independence, fairness and accuracy without regard to who is in charge politically. Turner’s grandson John R. Seydel III was in attendance and said Turner built CNN as an act of defiance because he believed “fearless, 24/7 independent journalism was oxygen for our democracy.”

The memorial was held during a period of rapid change for Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, TNT and Turner’s other Atlanta-based networks.

The company is in the midst of a $110 billion merger with the David Ellison-led Paramount Skydance, owner of the Paramount film studio, CBS and other major networks. That tie-up will unite both company’s networks amid a period of declining viewership and ad dollars for traditional television. The merger, which is awaiting government approval, has already met scrutiny from the larger media ecosystem.

A roundtable discussion will be held in Atlanta on Tuesday to discuss the merger. The event will feature U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Lithonia, and former Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya as speakers, among others.

The future of CNN and its editorial independence remains a point of concern in the deal. Ellison, since leading a 2024 effort to combine Paramount with his Skydance Media, has overseen sweeping changes at CBS News.

Most controversial was his decision to appoint Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press with no experience in broadcast journalism, to lead CBS News. She came in with the goal of moving coverage away from what she and Ellison believe is a bias against President Donald Trump. She has also been tasked with reinventing the network’s best-performing magazine program “60 Minutes,” which has led to the firing of veteran correspondents and the show’s executive producer Tanya Simon. In May, she appointed investigative journalist Nick Bilton, who likewise has not worked in broadcast journalism, as an executive producer to run the show.

Last week, longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent and former “CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley was fired after accusing Weiss of “murdering ‘60 Minutes” and telling Bilton he had little qualifications to oversee the show and would “never be welcome,” the New York Times reported. In a statement issued June 3, Pelley said the new management had instructed him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified.” He elaborated in the interview with The New York Times that Weiss specifically sought tweaks to a story about immigration protests in Minneapolis.

In a statement to the Times, a spokesperson for CBS News said Weiss made “four points in the course of editorial back-and-forth. They had no political motivation and were proposed solely to make the piece as strong, fair, and accurate as possible.”