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Text File | 1992-10-19 | 13KB | 261 lines

                                                                                MAN OF THE YEAR, Page 28

TED TURNER

Inside the World of CNN


How a handful of news executives make decisions felt round the
world

By RICHARD ZOGLIN/ATLANTA


    It is Wednesday afternoon, the woman who has accused
William Kennedy Smith of rape has just begun to testify, and
producer Bob Furnad is having a Maalox moment. After two days
of mostly pallid testimony by other witnesses, prosecutor Moira
Lasch has suddenly called the accuser to the stand. But Furnad,
who is running the control room, has just learned that Terry
Anderson, the last American hostage to be released, is scheduled
to make his first appearance in Damascus at 3:30 p.m. -- smack
in the middle of CNN's trial coverage. What should Furnad do:
continue to cover the long-awaited testimony of the accuser in
the most publicized rape trial in history or cut away to Terry
Anderson's press conference?

    As the crunch hour approaches, the atmosphere in the
control room becomes subtly charged. Furnad, legs jiggling
nervously, lunges toward the monitors, computer screens and
phone buttons arrayed before him, yelling orders. CNN president
Tom Johnson shows up, hovering in the background. Ed Turner,
another top CNN executive, appears, looking worried. "Of all the
convergence of events," he says. "Six years they hold the guy
. . ."

    The decision is made quietly, almost imperceptibly: no
matter what is happening at the trial, CNN will cut away to
Anderson. Their best hope is that his appearance will coincide
with the trial's afternoon recess, due to come at 3:30.

    The half-hour break arrives on schedule, but Anderson does
not. "Come on," mutters Furnad, "it's gotta happen before 4
o'clock." On the air, reporter Charles Jaco is killing time by
talking to a legal expert. Finally Anderson appears. Furnad
shifts into overdrive: a switch back to Atlanta anchor Lou
Waters; a shot of Anderson arriving; a split screen showing
Anderson's Associated Press colleagues in New York City; a phone
interview with John Anderson, Terry's brother.

    Terry Anderson is talking now, but Furnad's main concern
is the West Palm Beach courtroom, where testimony is resuming.
"C'mon, Terry, speed it up," he urges. At 4:20 Anderson finally
finishes. Turn on the anchor's mike ("He's leaving! Talk,
Lou!"), cut to a commercial, then back to the trial. Only seven
minutes of the accuser's testimony has been missed; her
emotional account of the incident is yet to come. Count it
another CNN success.

    But hardly an unmixed one. Unlike its much praised
performance during the Persian Gulf war, CNN's
pantyhose-to-towel coverage of the Smith rape trial was
controversial. The all-news network pandered to tabloid tastes,
critics complained, or ignored more "serious" news, or cut away
too often for commercials, or invaded the victim's privacy, or
tried to guard it too assiduously. Nonetheless, the trial
illustrated the essence of CNN: the coverage was live, dramatic,
exhausting, messy and irresistible.

    The trial also proved to be a tricky test for the people
who decide what mix of news CNN will beam to its global
audience. As the network's impact has grown, those decisions
have become more crucial. To the extent that the images CNN
chooses to show -- Boris Yeltsin defying coup plotters or a
reporter sifting through bomb damage in Baghdad -- are important
in shaping people's attitudes and governments' policies, a
handful of news executives in Atlanta are among the world's most
influential journalists.

    Ted Turner may be the only one who ever thought CNN could
come so far so fast. When Turner first launched the upstart
24-hour news operation in 1980, under the guidance of its
brilliant but volatile president Reese Schonfeld, it had a staff
of 300 and a newsroom tucked into the basement of a converted
country club. Technical flubs were common: on the very first
hour of CNN's first day, a story about baseball star Reggie
Jackson was cut short when the transmission from New York
suddenly went dead.

    Today CNN has a staff of more than 1,700, a global reach
in excess of 75 million homes and a budget that keeps growing
while the three broadcast networks cut back. Its headquarters
are spread over several floors in a hotel-and-shopping complex
in downtown Atlanta, formerly called the Omni and now dubbed
CNN Center. The network has established its credibility, and it
makes money: a profit of $134 million in 1990 and most likely
more in 1991.

    Yet the crucial decisions are still made in
seat-of-the-pants fashion, chiefly by three top executives. The
veteran of the trio is Ed Turner, a charter member of the CNN
staff, who is probably best known (as news stories quoting him
invariably point out) for not being related to owner Ted. As
executive vice president in charge of newsgathering, Turner is
responsible for CNN's worldwide network of 95 correspondents.
He is the soul of CNN: serious, pragmatic, not flashy but
fiercely competitive. "No, we don't throw money around like the
networks," says Turner about CNN's relatively tightfisted
operation. "But who's expanding and who's shrinking?"

    If Turner is in charge of getting news into the building,
Furnad, senior executive producer, is the man responsible for
getting it on the air. An 18-year veteran of ABC News who joined
CNN in 1983, Furnad is a feisty field general who can berate
his troops for a technical slipup one minute and praise them
warmly the next. Staffers stand in awe of his poise and judgment
under fire. "As wild as he is," says anchor Bobbie Battista,
"there isn't anybody I'd rather have in there."

    Overseeing the entire network is Johnson, the former
publisher of the Los Angeles Times who was installed by Ted
Turner as CNN's third president in August 1990. Much of
Johnson's impact at CNN comes from the contrast he provides to
the man he replaced: Burt Reinhardt, a respected,
budget-conscious but rather aloof news executive. Johnson, 50,
is an affable Georgia native with a Rolodex full of political
contacts, dating from his years as an aide to President Lyndon
B. Johnson. He has taken a hands-on approach to CNN in more ways
than one. During the gulf war he brought cookies to bleary-eyed
staffers working on the weekend. When ABC signed up Mikhail
Gorbachev and Yeltsin for a joint interview after the failed
coup, Johnson flew to Moscow and personally negotiated with them
to do separate interviews on CNN first.

    Johnson is a relative newcomer to television, a fact
regarded as a handicap by some, a strength by others. He admits
he is still learning the medium. "I'm not going to try to become
an expert in TV technology," he says. "I want to surround
myself with people who are better than I am in the various
disciplines. My job is to lead."

    Some CNN insiders feel his leadership has been lacking.
There is much talk these days at the news channel about the need
to forge a new direction for the '90s, and a suspicion that
Johnson has not found one. If the gulf war was a watershed event
for CNN (ratings hit a one-day peak of 9.5, meaning 5.4 million
homes were tuned in during an average minute, in contrast to a
year-round average of 410,000 homes), the aftermath was
something of a crash to earth. Viewership dropped, not just to
prewar levels but even, for a time, slightly below. CNN is still
struggling to find a way to consistently attract more than a
relatively small core of news junkies.

    Toward that end, Johnson is trying to stress more
perspective and analysis in CNN's reporting and to find more
"anchors who are journalists." He has hired veteran reporters
like Deborah Potter (from CBS) and Brent Sadler (from Britain's
ITN), and is trying to woo Bill Moyers away from PBS. CNN has
also set up a 60-member election unit, which will produce a
daily half-hour program of campaign news starting in January.

    AT THE SAME TIME, JOHNSON is pushing to expand the
all-news network into new venues. CNN has a d