Overview
- Tuner Enterprises, which confirmed Wednesday that Turner died at 87, said he passed peacefully surrounded by family.
- Officials have not released a cause of death, and Turner had previously disclosed a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia in 2018.
- Turner launched CNN in 1980 as the first round-the-clock cable news channel, a model that grew in influence during events like the 1990–91 Gulf War.
- He built a broad media portfolio including TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies, owned the Atlanta Braves and Hawks, and sold his media holdings to Time Warner in 1996 for about $7.5 billion.
- He pledged up to $1 billion to the United Nations, co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative to reduce nuclear and biological risks, became a major U.S. landowner focused on conservation and bison restoration, and is being honored in tributes led by CNN’s Mark Thompson.