Ted Turner says he tried to go to Baghdad to cover the war live for CNN but wasn’t allowed.
Turner, the largest shareholder of CNN parent AOL Time Warner, volunteered for dangerous war-zone duty, but said his CNN executives believed he couldn’t handle it.
“I’m 64, pretty much financially wiped out, and it would be a dramatic way to exit the world,” Turner told an audience of media luminaries yesterday at a Newhouse School of Public Communications breakfast.
“But they said no, I ‘wasn’t qualified.’ How qualified to you have to be? Holding the microphone and describing the world falling apart isn’t a magical thing . . . ‘I’m here in Baghdad . . . bombs are everywhere . . .’ ”
Turner says his offer “was a spur of the moment thing.”
“Some [at CNN] wanted to pull out . . . so I said I’ll stay in Baghdad if no one else will, but they didn’t want me to,” Turner told his audience, including a chuckling NBC anchor Tom Brokaw.
“Qualifications didn’t have anything to do with it. I wasn’t qualified to start CNN, I wasn’t qualified for anything – I was a classics major in college.”
CNN had no comment on Turner’s offer, but said it has a four-person crew remaining in Baghdad.
Turner says he still has some hard feelings against former AOL Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin for pursuing the AOL merger, against Turner’s better judgment.
“I had a deal to buy NBC, but Jerry [Levin] killed it. If we’d merged with NBC instead of AOL, we’d have a $50 stock today,” Turner said.
Levin, now retired, couldn’t be reached for comment.