Nothing is off limits for Citizen Ted self-styled bearer of the US conscience

Ted Turner is in typically rambunctious mood. Hesitating outside his boardroom door, he hears I have come from London, in the week after Jill Dando's murder. "Jeez, I'm glad you didn't get shot. Is it safe to come in?" he yells, before cracking a big ole redneck grin.

The man once dubbed the Jiminy Cricket of US broadcasting is beyond the control of any spin doctor. No topic is off-message for the self-styled bearer of the nation's conscience, no matter how controversial the subject or scathing the criticism of his arch rival, Rupert Murdoch.

The career of the 61-year-old tobacco-spitting son of a deepsouth billboard mogul is peppered with the kind of apocryphal stories that, when put to CNN executives, elicit a smile and a longsuffering, "That's Ted". They include some crackers such as the time when Mr Turner - personal motto: "lead, follow or get outta the way" - pitched to a group of advertising clients in the nude.

Or, when he won the America's Cup in 1977 and slid under the desk at the press conference after one too many celebratory tots of rum. The image of Mr Turner lying prostrate on the floor was relayed live across the US, earning a place in media history when it was repeated on 60 Minutes.

"Please, call me Ted. I'm just a journalist like you," Mr Turner insists as he sits down at a table which is a little smaller than his home state of Georgia and launches into a despondent monologue on the troubles of being Ted. "I'm trying to understand why all this has happened," he says, shaking his head and referring to the war in Kosovo and the economic crises in Asia and Latin America.

Citizen Ted - no prize for guessing his favourite film - describes himself as a "screaming internationalist". Wearing a United Nations tie printed with the world's flags, the first night of the bombing, he says, was "like a dagger going into my heart. I broke down and cried".

The Kosovan crisis is, says Mr Turner, testing the media as never before. After CNN, his 24-hour global news channel, was accused of celebrating US bombing raids, Slobodan Milosevic charged the network with bias and called for Tom Johnson, chairman and president of CNN news, to be tried for war crimes.

Mr Turner appears genuinely troubled and world-weary. "Non-violent means are always the best," he says. "We should have tried economic boycotts first. If we are going to ban land mines, why the hell should we still drop bombs from the air? It's barbaric."

The speech is well-rehearsed. Mr Turner is married to "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, America's most celebrated peace advocate. He is aware his words may sound hollow coming from an entrepreneur who has made his millions from covering global disasters.

"Yeah, I know, words are cheap everybody talks about peace. But, look, I am contributing $100 million (€93.63 million) a year to the UN, some of the money I have made off the international operations of CNN - so it's going back in," he retorts.

Despite his power and wealth, it has taken many years for Mr Turner to be accepted by the US broadcasting establishment. Even now his idealism and eccentricity distance him from the mainstream, but it seems the industry has belatedly realised that he was a genuine visionary, 20 years ahead of his time.

In the early 1980s, Mr Turner revolutionised production financing by suggesting to producers they would get no money up front, instead they would receive a share of advertising revenue. It offered a producer an economic stake in the show's success, a subject that was championed more recently by Peter Bazalgette in his 1998 MacTaggart lecture. And 20 years before Mr Murdoch's attempt to buy Manchester United, Mr Turner spotted the potential of owning sports and movie rights. In the mid-1970s he bought the Braves, Hawks and Flames, Atlanta's baseball, basketball and ice hockey teams, so Mr Murdoch's failed takeover leaves Mr Turner's face crinkled with undisguised schadenfreude. "Heh, heh, heh, even the British government has finally caught on to him and wouldn't let him buy that soccer team. Well, good for them," he says, gleefully.

"Murdoch really wants power, to control governments and build up the kind of media monopolies all over the world that he has in your country. But at least in some cases, the government has caught on."

Mr Turner believes foreign nationals should be banned from media ownership and advocates a policy of partnerships and investment in place of ownership and control. He tells the story of an Indian television executive who, in 1997, attended the CNN World Report conference and discussed Mr Murdoch's tactics: "This guy said that his country didn't fight to get its freedom from Britain for 100 years just to turn it over to Rupert Murdoch."

Mr Murdoch is still embroiled in a legal case with the Indian government over his Star TV channel. Accusing him of broadcasting offensive material, the Indian government has subpoenaed Mr Murdoch to appear in court.

"India doesn't want a load of foreigners - and I don't use that word very often - in its country. Channels, newspapers and magazines should be owned by the people that care about your country."

This isn't just convenient Murdoch-bashing for Mr Turner. To him, citizenship and accountability are crucial: "I don't want Rupert Murdoch, or for that matter, Ted Turner, controlling everything around the world.

"Ownership should be restricted to locals - even if they are bums. It's better to have a local bum, then at least you can do something to him if he steps out of line - like spit on him, or punch him in the nose.

"But if he's holed up in California, like Murdoch, you can't get near him. The Indian government can't even lock him up, because they can't catch him and he won't come to India."

Mr Turner warms to this theme, clearly tickled pink by the thought of his adversary doing porridge: "If he steps off the plane in India he's goin' straight to jail," he cackles, slapping his thigh. "Jeez, they got a subpoena out for him - an' they don't have one out for me."

Mr Turner started CNN because he thought it was a cool idea, "but mostly, I wanted to survive. A 24-hour global news network was uncharted waters. When I saw we were going to make it, we started spreading all over the world, like a virus".

The Challenger space-shuttle explosion in 1986, the hijack of a TWA airliner, and Mexico City's earthquake in 1985 put CNN on the map, supported by newsroom legends such as "Mad Dog" Kavanau, whose editorial policy was "If it bleeds, it leads".

But CNN really earned its stripes during the 1991 Gulf War, when it was the only news network in Baghdad on the night Operation Desert Storm began. Journalist Peter Arnett got the scoop of his life and the Chicken Noodle Network, as its detractors had dubbed it, was placed firmly on the map.

Whether the network has achieved a similar dominance over coverage of Kosovo is debatable. However, as a domestic US network, CNN's prowess is obvious. For a recent conference it wheeled out US envoy Richard Holbrooke, Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter and Kofi Annan over three days, a coup due mostly to Mr Turner's influence and his values, which still infuse the network.

"I know for a fact that Clinton had a TV put in his bathroom so he could watch CNN," Mr Turner boasts, once again beating the table with mirth.

"Even I don't have a TV in my bathroom to watch CNN, but I guess I am not in there for very long." The recent release of the American POWs received wall-towall coverage, but Mr Turner is adamant that the network doesn't indulge in the jingoism that critics say prevents it from becoming a truly global network.

"We don't fan the flames of nationalism on CNN," he retorts. "We just tell the story, and that was a big one."

As vice-chairman of Time Warner, with a responsibility for some 30 magazines including Time, Fortune, People and Entertainment Weekly, Mr Turner says he is "worried about the future of newspapers and print because so much is now online".

But it must be a concern that goes little further than skin-deep; when the Starr Report was released, CNN's website set a record for the most visits ever to an Internet location.

Once he is on a roll there is no stopping the Mouth of the South, worth $4.8 billion, but he does refuse to speculate on his next move.

"I don't even know if I will be here in five years. My father died at 53, and I'm already outliving him, so who knows? Jeez, I fly a lot and planes are always going down, and now that journalists have been targeted, and your BBC woman was killed on her doorstep, I might get shot as I leave here tonight. I guess in a way it would be a big relief - I wouldn't have to worry about everything so much."

And then, with as abrupt a departure as his arrival, the Atlanta whirlwind is gone, stopping only to shout back: "We're done here. I gotta go get me a haircut."