Ted Turner built a media machine that turned on him

Ted Turner, who died on Wednesday at 87 after a long battle with Lewy body dementia, was one of the last well-meaning liberal media barons. But almost every reform he attempted produced the opposite of what he intended. The empire he assembled now sits, piece by piece, in the hands of the Right-wingers he opposed his whole life. From cable news to professional wrestling to the studio vault to the internet itself, nearly every reform Turner championed wound up as infrastructure for MAGA.