by Jim Brown and Allie Martin
A media researcher says Ted Turner's recent diatribe to students at Brown University is just one more example of the media mogul's “far-left” view of the world.
In a lecture at the Ivy League school on Monday night, the AOL Time Warner vice-chairman said the September 11 hijackers were “brave,” and that Americans lack an understanding of a willingness to die for one's country. The CNN founder also compared President Bush to Julius Caesar and praised Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Rich Noyes is director of media analysis for the Media Research Center. Noyes says Turner and many of his liberal media colleagues are sympathetic to the Cuban tyrant, despite facts that illustrate the human-rights abuses committed during Castro's grip on the island nation.
“They seem to forget the plight of political prisoners in Cuba,” Noyes points out, “or the fact that if this man was so popular, he would have allowed a free election at some point in the 40 years he's held control in Cuba. Or the fact that there's been a body count to rival Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, in Cuba during the years that Castro's been in charge.”
Noyes says Turner does not just have conventional liberal view of the world, but rather a “far-left” view — and he adds that Turner's sympathy for communists is nothing new.
“He criticized Ronald Reagan for declaring the Soviet Union 'an evil empire',” he says. “The dissidents who were trying to fight the evil Soviet system liked it that an American president was finally calling evil 'evil,' and that we were finally getting away from being diplomatic about these things. It gave them some hope that thing were going to change for the better.”
“Ted Turner still thinks that was a bad move,” Noyes says. “He would have preferred that we would have accommodated the Soviet Union and that it was still here today.”
Turner also told Brown students the environment will collapse in their lifetime, and he called for the U.S. to give more money for AIDS research, education, and women's rights in the Third World. In a statement released Tuesday night, Turner claims his comments were “reported out of context” — but officials with two local newspapers stand by their stories. The editor of The Brown Daily Herald says he attended the lecture and does not think anything Turner said was misinterpreted by his reporter.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
