ATLANTA - Ed Turner, who helped establish CNN as a major respected news organization, died Saturday. He was 66. <br>
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Turner died at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., after battling liver cancer. <br>
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``Ed loved his profession, his staff and his network,'' former CNN chairman Tom Johnson said. ``His loyalty to Ted Turner, to me and to excellent standards of journalism never will be forgotten.'' <br>
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Turner was hired in 1980 as one of the first news professionals brought into the company. The fact that he coincidentally shared the last name of founder Ted Turner earned him the nickname ``No Relation'' Turner, which he had printed on matchbooks he distributed from his office, CNN Miami Bureau Chief John Zarella said. <br>
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Turner retired in 1998 as vice president in charge of newsgathering and tried unsuccessfully to launch California News Service, a smaller version of CNN. He worked for the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit journalism organization, and had been co-writing a history of CNN with former correspondent Peter Arnett. <br>
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Turner was born in Bartlesville, Okla., in 1935 and graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1957. <br>
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He joined KWTV, the CBS affiliate in Oklahoma City, as a reporter and anchor two years later. He left the local station in 1966 to work as a producer for ``CBS Morning News,'' but returned to KWTV and served as the station's vice president and news director from 1978 to 1979. <br>
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After leaving Oklahoma, Turner worked for WTTG in Washington, where he introduced young journalists Connie Chung, Bob Schieffer and Maury Povich and a 10 o'clock evening newscast - an hour earlier than most late-night news programs. <br>
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Turner spoke of starting CNN as a risk that was too exciting to pass up. <br>
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``It was a crusade, absolutely,'' Turner once told a University of Oklahoma magazine. ``No one knew whether it would work, but the challenge was too great not to have a go at it.''
