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lubujackson
superfrank
Wow. It wasn't until I read your comment that it clicked that the Turner in Turner Classic Movies is Ted Turner.
SoftTalker
Also the "T" in TBS, originally WTCG in Atlanta that became "superstation" WTBS (later dropping the leading W).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_TBS_(American_TV_ch...
sanj
And WTBS the radio station was also purchased by Ted Turner!
It was originally "Tech Broadcasting Service" and run by an MIT student group.
For the $50k purchase, the newly-named WMBR purchased a new transmitter.
undefined
mc32
There was a bit of a furore when he tried colorizing old B&W movies… imagine if he’d had AI to do colorization, upscaling and sharpening back then!
Guess we’ll still have Ted’s Montana Grills for a while…
m463
I kind of wonder if there were color photos of the actors and scenes from the time of some of the black-and-white movies. You could use them as conversion-training-data with AI to auto-colorize the movies.
(maybe they do that now?)
dylan604
I was wondering if they are going to put Ted's crayons in the box with him. At the time of this first being done it was so comically bad, and the jokes were ruthless. As much as I'm not a fan, the modern AI stuff is so much better without saying it's good. That's just how bad Turner's colorization was. The best colorization was Weta's footage from WWI where they used the actual uniforms in the images as reference rather than just someone adding color based on the feels.
asciimov
Those colorized movies were awful, AI would have just made them awful in their own way.
Outside of film restoration, old movies should be enjoyed the way they were made.
Forgeties79
Rightfully so if you ask me. Out the gate think about the implications of determining, say, skin color. I’m not saying “under no circumstances should it be done” but I also think people don’t appreciate the importance of the decisions made and the politics/implicit biases under the hood. I’m not even getting in to artistic intent and impact on lighting here either.
Colorizing b&w images is still debated to this day.
Bratmon
This is like being surprised that the Obama the Obama Presidential Library is about is Barack Obama.
asveikau
I had a chuckle at your comment and felt it was true. But wonder if the commenter is younger. Ted Turner was much more of a household name and public figure in the 20th century. He became less involved in the cable empire by the mid 90s. Younger millennials and onwards probably heard people talk about him a lot less.
Ps. Another memorable media portrayal of Turner, he was clearly the basis for the boss character in the 1994 cartoon The Critic.
singleshot_
Won’t you be surprised to finally learn about the precursor band to Canadian legends The Guess Who: Barackman Turner Overdrive
mattmaroon
Oh! I thought it was Jim Obama, the owner of Obama Chevrolet of Sheboygan!
Melatonic
Obama is also a lot more recently known and a more unique sounding name
sophacles
I don't think anyone else with the name Obama has been president of anything that confers a library (let alone a presidential library), your answer seems a bit needlessly derisive. I suspect you're just insecure about your personal level of useful knowledge and are trying to lord over someone with your trivia fact.
undefined
watersb
I remember when Ted Turner bought a scrappy Atlanta TV station, Channel 17.
The channels refer to specific radio frequency allocations. Anything below Channel 12 is "Very High Frequency", and anything above that is "Ultra High Frequency". The Channel number was basically arbitrary, but went up in frequency in numerical order, so Channel 5 had a higher frequency than Channel 17.
The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength, and in general the smaller the area of coverage. Fewer viewers. The big networks dominated VHF, megawatt transmitters that could reach the entire metro area and beyond. In the Atlanta area, we had all three major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC on Channels 2, 5, and 11.
UHF was the domain of independent operators, who filled airtime with anything they could get. Mostly old TV shows and movies from syndicate distributors. Channel 17 was mostly old movies, while Channel 36 featured old TV shows. "Superman" and "The Lone Ranger". "Star Trek". Later in the evening, 1950s schlock horror or flying saucer films...
With an uneven format and transmission range that limited viewership and advertising revenue, it could be more challenging for the UHF stations to make ends meet. When Channel 17 ran into financial difficulties, Ted Turner pumped it up. UHF stations typically signed off at night, went off the air, but the Turner Superstation was 24 hours a day.
Apparently, Ted Turner was playing a long game.
(Also apparently, I watched a lot of television as a 1970s latchkey kid.)
nrb
Growing up, I always thought it curious that my hometown in central Illinois operated only on UHF stations (19/25/31/43/47 I think) despite the fact there was no major metro for over 100 miles in any direction, where when we would visit major cities and see stations in the 2-13 range.
fsckboy
>*Anything below Channel 12 is "Very High Frequency"
VHF covers up to and including channel 13
It's actually something people across the country may feel familiar with because "Channel 13" is New York City's PBS channel (WNET) and they export programming like Sesame Street out to PBS affiliates everywhere (not as much as WGBH in Boston, but a lot)
watersb
Oops... Thanks! I wasn't certain of the boundary channel, but I went ahead and wrote it anyway.
Going from memory, and didn't verify.
We also had PBS at Channel 18, I believe.
jdeibele
Think you mean channel 17 had a higher frequency. Channel 5 would be VHF (low) in the range 54 MHz – 88 MHz while Channel 17 would UHV in the range 470 MHz – 698 MHz. You're absolutely right about UHF stations being difficult to tune in.
watersb
Thanks, yes: Channel 17 higher frequency.
(I tried to read what I wrote for errors, as autocorrect can smash any attempt at careful writing. But I didn't catch this.
Was invisible to me because I was reading the meaning of what I was attempting to say.
I think I just learned about semantic typos. Meme-os?)
gcanyon
> 1970s latchkey kid
I am now administering the secret '70s latchkey quiz:
- Ricky, I want to be...
- This is Jim Rockford...
- Ladies, please don't...
- Bingo, Bango, Bongo, and...
- Missed it by...
- We can rebuild...dylan604
I got 4 out of 6 of them. How many of these were on Nick at Night so you wouldn't necessarily have to be a 70s latchkey kid?
jdofaz
It flipped after the analog shutoff in 2009, most US TV stations are UHF now (even if the tv displays their VHF channel number)
mekdoonggi
Ted Turner owned the largest American Bison herd (~45k animals), supplying meat for his "Ted's Montana Grill" restaurants.
I don't know much else about the man, but as a supporter of Bison I can commend that part of his legacy. An impressive vision and execution.
gosub100
I asked a farmer once about if it was possible to switch from cows to bison. he said they need a special fence, because they are so massive (and temperamental) that they will just bust through a normal barbed wire fence. Not sure how true it is but seems plausible. I think he said they need a pen that is dug down, so the bison would have to climb up an incline to reach the fence.
echelon
He's why Atlanta got the 1996 Olympics.
He's responsible for rejuvenating Atlanta. It grew into a reasonable city after he built the TBS, CNN, and Turner Broadcasting empire. Without him, Atlanta may have been closer to a Charlotte in size, and definitely could not have pulled the Olympic games.
He gave Atlanta a media presence and those that came after him turned it into a media production hub.
He also created Captain Planet, which raised millennials on environmental causes.
We wouldn't have had Cartoon Network, Toonami, or Adult Swim without his William Street studios.
He briefly owned the Atlanta Braves and was their owner during their 90's World Series win. He funded their stadium, which doubled as the Olympic Stadium during the games (and which is now a part of Georgia State University).
He may have created the Georgia Guidestones (sadly they were bombed) and reportedly recorded a secret message not to be played until WWIII / nuclear annihilation.
He did a lot of good.
idiotsecant
>as a supporter of Bison...
I'm not sure I've run into a 'supporter' of a particular type of bovine before.
Why?
Bison are surely pretty comparable on a lbs mass to methane released ratio when fed with the same diets that cattle are.
sfdlkj3jk342a
Bison are less selective eaters and tend to spread out more, so they're less damaging to grasslands than cattle. They also require less water, antibiotics, and general attention than cattle.
serf
other bovines didn't get to near-extinction and spring back after years of remediation and lobbying efforts, the American bison did.
lo_zamoyski
You might find the European bison interesting [0].
giglamesh
[dead]
ethbr1
One of the last existent species of North American megafauna!
foolfoolz
how do you own a herd
mekdoonggi
This comment is low-effort, but in the case you are genuinely confused, the herd refers to the animals on a given ranch. As in, you have a ranch of 100 acres and 100 bison on it. The owner of the ranch owns a herd of 100.
The bison aren't roaming free on the land. It would be nice if they were, and there are efforts to restore wild bison herds, but these are commercial herds. Far better than cows and CAFOs.
andyjohnson0
I don't know, but I wonder if your parent commenter is making a philosophical point about the potentially illusory nature of owning a group of semi-wild animals. Like, if the only way you have of asserting your ownership is to use them as a food source, then do you really "own" them? Or do they exist outside and apart from human ideas of property?
Or like owning a mountain or a centuries-old tree. Does that even mean anything?
jihadjihad
One head of bison at a time.
Fordec
The same way every beef farmer does.
MyHonestOpinon
By owning (or renting) the land where it is kept ?
Lammy
Here's some good slice of life for you: https://www.youtube.com/@CrossTimbersBison
cman1444
The same way you own anything. You buy it or make (breed) it.
geodel
First thing one need is herd mentality.
Biganon
In order to own your herd, you need to herd your own
PretzelPirate
> but as a supporter of Bison
If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?
mekdoonggi
I support them as wildlife, a food source, and ecological resource. If people in the US ate bison instead of cows, it would be a huge benefit for the climate, ecosystem, and our health.
If he had not created a profitable enterprise, there would not be 45k wild bison roaming free with the same amount of dollars.
It's not like I want bison to die, but if an American is going to eat a bovid, it's much better for it to be a bison. The American great plains are big enough to support vast wild herds and sustainable, profitable enterprises, but in order for that to happen, Americans need to eat bison, not cows.
fragmede
Because the person who killed then for a profit also paid to have them exist, gave them a home and food. In wanting to eat bison meat, he paid to have more bison exist, so there are more bison than if he hadn't killed some of them for eating.
thinkingtoilet
I 100% agree. However, I do think there is room for discussion for someone to ask is that a good thing? It is good if there is more of them if they only exist to be killed? I don't think things like this are black and white. If they only existed in the worst conditions in factory farms my answer would be no. If they can live a good life and be slaughtered humanely my answer would be yes. I think it's easy to dismiss comments like the one you responded to, but I would argue it's always good to think about these things.
iberator
he also gave LIFE - people need food for survival AND full protein to grow muscles and brain.
Meat is super efficient for protein - thats why every successful Civilization does it
ramesh31
>If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?
Because they wouldn't exist otherwise.
herodoturtle
“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise!” - Ted Turner
Side note, for those of you that enjoy biographies, his autobiography “Call Me Ted” is a real page-turner (pun intended).
A highly inspirational story of entrepreneurship, which includes a raw and authentic account of his flaws.
A true legend.
Rest in peace Ted.
geodel
There is 4 part series on HBO with same name ( I think). I watched it last year. Learned a lot from business to personal life.
joecool1029
#4 largest private land owner in the US: https://landreport.com/land-report-100#top-100
Wonder what's going to be done with it now that he's dead.
Slow_Hand
I was a Boy Scout growing up and the Philmont Ranch is a destination for hiking and backpacking situated on his property. Twi weeks of backpacking through that wilderness was a formative experience for me, and I hope future generations aren't deprived of the opportunity to enjoy it.
floxy
I wonder what ever happened with the stream poisoning effort on a creek that ran through his ranch. That was bit of a thing growing-up back in Montana in the 90s, where the billionaire outsider wanted to poison the stream to kill off one species of fish to encourage another species.
https://www.rangemagazine.com/archives/stories/winter00/murk...
aufhebung
isn't that land part of a scheme to farm bison and save them from extinction? it would make sense for his will to specify that it keeps being used for this.
e40
Jane Fonda was his last spouse. I hope he left it to her. She's a very cool lady with a great head on her shoulders. A recent interview (The Interview, NYT) is worth listening to. She talked very positive about Ted in this interview, which made me think they had a good relationship still.
mc32
She had a terrible influence against nuclear energy which retarded the industry by five decades!
We would not be in the pickle we are if she didn’t mindlessly scare and misinform people undermining a whole industry based on her misunderstanding.
throwawaypath
>She's a very cool lady with a great head on her shoulders.
Made me spit out my coffee. Hanoi Jane Fonda isn't very cool, and does not have a great head on her shoulders.
decimalenough
She was early, consistent, vocal, brave, and in the light of history morally right in her opposition to the Vietnam War.
kstrauser
I'll go down that road with you. I agree with Jane on a great many issues, I'm sure. I certainly don't dislike her for her overall political leanings. And yet, I can't look at her without thinking about what she did in Vietnam.
The idea that she passed POW secrets to their captors has been debunked to my satisfaction. But the other stuff she did, calling our POWs liars and touring to support the army we were fighting, is beyond the pale.
Like, you can say we shouldn't be attacking Iran and I won't argue against you. But if you actually went to Iran in support of their soldiers and armies over ours, except maybe as a journalist who documents bad stuff you discover us doing, then I'm going to invite you to stay there.
serf
it's amazing to me that she can still be derided for that stuff even now years later after we've all had a chance to recollect on what a mistake Vietnam was collectively as humans outside national borders.
throwaway accts used to be for spilling company abuses and having risque opinions , not for holding the line at party propaganda points.
jinjin2
Ted Turner also created the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, which was a half a million dollars literary prize for coming up with a book that offered “creative solutions to humanity's urgent problems".
The winner was Daniel Quinn’s “Ismael”. Quite a remarkable book that probably never would have been published without this.
bulatov
Ted personally funded the 1986 Goodwill Games in Seattle as a direct response to the US/USSR mutual Olympic boycotts of '80 and '84, losing ~$26M out of pocket. CNN also hosted the famous US-Soviet "space bridge" TV linkups around the same time. RIP.
echelon
He also helped Atlanta land the 1996 Olympic games.
dhosek
He’s been pretty quiet in the news for a while so he sort of fell into the category of those famous people who when they died, half your response is a bit of surprise that they were still alive (which is neither a good nor bad thing, just a thing¹).
⸻
1. I once had an idea for a party game which involved people trying to guess whether a formerly prominent person was alive or dead.
chrisparsons
The MTV show Remote Control had a round called "Dead or Canadian", which has morphed into pub quizzes as "Dead or Canadian, Both or Neither?", which is shockingly tricky at times.
gbacon
The Dead or Canadian category on its own was surprisingly tricky. Remote Control was fun TV.
jason_s
I had a similar idea, Who's Still Alive / Who Died First with pairs of people. (Who died first: Johnny Carson or Ed McMahon? John Glenn or Neil Armstrong?)
lotsoweiners
I guess it would need an internet connection to work but sounds fun.
dhosek
I made a list that I kept on my phone of potential names (Provided below with the answers removed—I made the list three years ago so I know at least one of the living then are alive no more).
Actors: Gary Burghoff Alan Alda Wayne Rogers Jamie Farr Loretta Switt Harry Morgan Mike Farrell David Ogden Stiers McLean Stevenson Lary Linville Cast of Gilligan’s Island Crocodile Dundee
Musicians: Pete Best Stuart Sutcliffe Frankie Avalon Annette Funicello
Politics: Henry Kissinger Geraldine Ferraro Jane Byrne Michael Bilandic Eugene Sawyer Eddie Vrdolyak
derwiki
Appreciate going deep on MAS*H
TheGRS
I might have to steal that idea!
christoff12
I'd play that game
JSR_FDED
I remember CNN bursting onto the scene. It was revolutionary. Although there was never (even today) enough news to fill a 24hr period. Just endless repeats of the same block of news.
throwaway27448
> Although there was never (even today) enough news to fill a 24hr period.
Of course there's enough news; they simply choose not to report on it. This is true both domestically and certainly around the world. Presumably this is a mixture of highly dubious editorial decision and some reasoning that this doesn't make money.
james_pm
The original "Situation Room" concept with Wolf was pulling in all these live feeds from all over the place and reporting on them. Car chase in LA! Train crash in India! Protest in Paris! Let's go live!
They had a web subscription product around 2006 that gave you access to just watch all these raw feeds from CNN Affiliates all over the world. It was like Periscope but all "professional" feeds.
Scoundreller
Now instead of so many repeats, we get panels of 5 talking heads "analyzing" 15 seconds of news for 15 minutes.
pstuart
TV news is garbage everywhere.
xattt
Of all the fascinating things that I’ve seen, there was a Moscow TV station rebroadcasting CNN during the Gulf War.
My memory is hazy, and I accepted it as-is at the time, but the idea that American news could be watched live shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union seems entirely wild.
undefined
unselect5917
News isn't watched, it's read. There's extraordinary convincing power in having a talking head say things to you. You're way more likely to believe it regardless of truth. It's why they all do it.
smcin
I don't think so. In latter decades CNN descended into a spin zone with blatant conflicts-of-interest, such as:
- CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux was married to Karine Jean-Pierre (Biden's press sec, 2022-5)
- CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour is married to James Rubin, (was Clinton admin asst. secretary of state for public affairs, 1997-2000)
- Jen Psaki's 2017 revolving-door when she was said to be actively shopping herself for a job at CNN while still Obama's WH communications director (no 12-month "cooling-off" period). Left WH 1/2017, joined CNN 2/2017.
- for decades now, CNN seems to function like a retirement home for Clinton-era operatives like James Carville and Donna Brazile. In particular this was a blatant conflict-of-interest in the 2016 primary (Hilary vs Bernie, and the DNC shenanigans). I've seen many bloggers say that TV loves these commentators not because they're that relevant or insightful, but because they steer candidates and their budgets towards big wasteful traditional media spends (and not more targeted internet campaigns, like Obama 2008 or Trump 2016).
- the legendary 2004 takedown of CNN's Crossfire debate show (a younger Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala) by Jon Stewart ("You're on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making prank phone calls! What is wrong with you?")
I don't find talking heads persuasive, and one simple antidote is to flick between coverage of the same issue on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, PBS, ABC/NBC/CBS, BBC, DW, RT, foreign channels, etc. to see conflicting narratives, or sometimes conflicting facts.
Maybe the better converse question is: when did CNN stop being any more credible and up-to-the-minute than other news sources (incl. internet ones, or SM)? Maybe late 1990s. Its rise and fall parallel the Clinton admin.
smcin
(Why did this get downvoted? I'm genuinely interested in how CNN went from being a premium news source (Somalia 1993) to the current thing, after several takeovers).
Orthogonal to whether people find print vs video trustworthy or authoritative, which I think is conditioned by what each person grew up considering to be trustworthy or authoritative.
undefined
ranger_danger
I think there absolutely would be enough if they also covered international stories as well as happier news. There's a whole lot more good going on in the world right now than bad, but for some reason we do not highlight it.
ap99
"For some reason" is that people do not watch it.
Once you get a taste of "bad" it dominates.
wat10000
It's important to remember that actually reporting news is a tertiary purpose of the news business. The primary purpose is to sell advertising. The secondary purpose is to get eyeballs onto their product, in order to facilitate the primary purpose. Reporting news is only done because it's how they've chosen to get those eyeballs.
ranger_danger
Maybe for some people, but I see no reason we shouldn't seek out and show good news... I think it makes people happier.
undefined
HerbManic
As they say "If it bleeds it leads"
Mentally you tend to equally weigh both good and bad news over a long time span, but negative news gets a much quicker and stronger initial reaction, thus it gets priority. Just an evolutionary trait, don't wait to see if the shadow is a tiger just assume it is about to attack.
This is why social media ends up the way it is, that quick reaction is what the algorithms pick up on even if long term it isn't any different. It is a hard issue to overcome especially when it is a free market race to the bottom.
throwaway27448
> There's a whole lot more good going on in the world right now than bad,
I have no clue how you could ever even estimate this sort of ratio. How do you even quantify the "number of things going on", let alone confidently split them into good and bad?
harimau777
I think that a lot of the issue might be that the "good" is often irrelevant to the user. E.g. Great news! Scientists discover new drug for treating cancer (in mice).
Ylpertnodi
'Good going on', rarely affects my wallet.
SkyeCA
And most of the "bad going on" is completely out of your control. People could do with consuming a lot less national/international news.
ranger_danger
There are other valid reasons to watch the news though.
gosub100
They know better than everyone what people watch. Apparently it's not profitable to do in-depth journalism. As someone else in this thread said, the bobble-head analysis is what people watched (past tense, because now they are the "legacy media").
I think it's strongly related to the market for "reaction videos" on youtube, or even the early-2000's VH1 shows where a famous/popular person would react to music videos. Perhaps people want to project their emotions onto an avatar?
jimt1234
I also remember when CNN first appeared. I was a kid, but I recall people (adults, Boomers) sort of rejected it at first. I think there was a trust issue, not just with CNN, but cable-TV in general. But yeah, I recall people thinking CNN was a passing fad, like it would fail in a year or so because people liked/trusted the local broadcasters and network anchors they'd known for most of their lives.
SoftTalker
I just remember it as a channel you could bring up that always had the top headlines right now. Yes they would repeat a lot of it every 15-30 minutes but if you didn't want to wait for the national TV news at 6:00pm you could just turn on CNN and feel informed. It was also the start of people getting addicted to the need to know everything all the time, later amplified 100x by the rise of the internet and mobile phones/media. I remember some people getting addicted to CNN, just had it on all the time.
Jtsummers
There was CNN and HNN (CNN2 at one point). CNN had more variety of coverage, interviews, etc. HNN was the one that repeated itself every 30 minutes or so (if nothing new came in), it was more like watching the national evening news at essentially any time of day. Then in the '00s they switched over to do more talking head junk.
arian_
Ted Turner built a 24-hour news network when everyone said nobody would watch news at 3 AM. Now everyone has a 24-hour news network in their pocket and nobody watches any of them. He was right about the demand but wrong about who would supply it.
paddy_m
Ted Turner won the America's cup there in 1977. His team named Courageous was legendary. Robbie Doyle was a team member, and got a degree from Harvard in applied physics. In the middle of the trials to see which team would defend the cup for the US, he remade the sails to be more competitive. Doyle went on to found a racing sailmaking company.
I used to live in Newport, RI. I love sailing and introducing people to the world of sailing. When I had guests I asked them to watch this NBC video about Ted's 77 campaign [1]. It really captures the history of Newport, sailing, and Ted
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr7-BwzceYI&list=PLXEMPXZ3PY...
jcgrillo
There was recently another good film on Netflix about the Australian victory at the 1983 America's Cup[1].
ftcHn
Sounds great. I'll watch it with the kids. We've recently done this podcast about the history of the cup and it was funny and fascinating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUZmk_G6rFE
tren_hard
> In 2010, Turner joined Warren Buffett's and Bill Gates's The Giving Pledge, vowing to donate the majority of his fortune to charity upon his death.
Does The Giving Pledge still exist? Will this happen?
snide
The NYTimes did a nice write-up about how The Giving Pledge is dropping out of vogue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/business/the-billionaire-...
MyHonestOpinon
I suppose that only works if most of them join the pledge. Otherwise, you will be "disarming" unilaterally.
cogman10
Nah, there's no legal force behind the pledge. It was always just a pinky swear.
It stopped giving the wealthy so much positive PR so a lot of them have simply stopped talking about it. Whether or not they still go through with it, who knows. I somewhat doubt they will.
The other problem people are quickly becoming aware of is that charities are ineffective ways to solve social problems. And, particularly for very wealthy and well connected people, the charities seem to be much more of a tax dodge with a glossy pamphlet rather than anything real.
DANmode
Will they still transfer all of their money to a (perhaps charitable) trust that their people control?
Yes.
georgemcbay
The Giving Pledge still exists, but like most philanthropy it has always been more about PR and reputation washing rather than real public good.
The majority of people who have died since making the pledge did not meet the terms they agreed to and the vast majority of people still alive who made the pledge are on track to fail to meet the terms as their wealth is growing significantly faster than their charitable donations.
This is not to say everyone who has made the Giving Pledge is bad, there are some people on the list who have legitimately done a lot of good, but being on the list has overall been a meaningless indicator of actual outcomes.
john_strinlai
>more about PR and reputation washing rather than real public good.
there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from".
that doesn't quite capture it... but in this context: the people receiving the money/help do not care if they got it because of "reputation washing" or "real public good". they get the help in both scenarios, and that's what matters.
as long as the money is going to actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes... who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?
janalsncm
The corollary is also true: the starving kid does not care that you are seen as generous. They are hungry.
We can argue all day about motives, but what really matters is action.
svnt
Who cares whether the people who control the majority of the planet’s capital actually care about other people or just the preservation of their image?
I do. I will accept the donation either way, but in terms of so much else, I fucking do.
tyg13
I'd even argue that we should encourage _more_ of this behavior, if it leads to more charity.
The idea that you have to do good deeds without expecting any kind of reward or recognition seems distinctly Christian to me. For Christians, the intent of this requirement is to ensure people remain humble (pride is a sin, of course) but this clearly contradicts the (imo much more relevant) principle of self interest. You can't really expect people to do something for other people without some kind of reward -- be it the promise of eternal salvation, some kind of social credit, or simply an internal sense of satisfaction.
As long as people aren't merely simulating charity to receive it, I don't see any downside to allowing people a bit of social reward for their giving.
harimau777
I think that the problem would be if the reputation washing prevents their victims from getting justice or if they leverage their reputation to victimize more people.
georgemcbay
> there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from".
A lot of the money never goes to the starving kid, it goes into foundations that act more as tax shelters than they do actual charitable organizations.
> who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?
It matters when the scope of their giving doesn't match the PR-generating pledges they make, which is the real point of my post.
If someone gives their money away to a good cause, I don't care what their real motivation is, but if they say they are going to give >50% of their wealth to charity to generate PR and then they never do that (true for the majority of Giving Pledge pledgers) that is behavior I think it contemptable and worthy of being called out.
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I remember around 2000 I read about how Ted Turner started his empire: he bought podunk local TV stations that had loose contracts with media owners that allowed them to broadcast shows as often as they wanted, with no restrictions. In the those days, local TV stations were broadcast just like radio and so the assumption was the contract only concerned the audience the TV station's antenna could reach. But the contract didn't specify this. Recognizing the loophole, he bought multiple stations and combined that content into its own cable channel(s) that played old movies and TV shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner This was the basis that allowed him to branch into CNN and more.
When I learned about this, the story was very applicable to me at the time, as my startup had acquired licenses for content that was historically sold directly to libraries by a salesman who would negotiate with each library individually. He used a standard contract. When we contacted the company to license content for display on the internet, they gave us a ridiculous contract with a small one time fee and access to display the content forever. Only after reasoning through their business model and history did we understand how this occurred, which was exactly the same type of gap that Ted Turner had exploited.