Ted Turner: Comparing Fox News with Hitler

Ted Turner called Fox a propaganda tool of the Bush administration and indirectly compared Fox News Channel's popularity to Adolf Hitler's popular election to run Germany before World War II.

Turner made those fiery comments in his first address at the National Association for Television Programming Executives' conference since he was ousted from Time Warner Inc. five years ago.

The 66-year-old billionaire, who leveraged a television station in Atlanta into a media empire, made the comment before a standing-room-only crowd at NATPE's opening session Tuesday.

His no-nonsense, sometimes humorous, approach during the one-hour Q&A generated frequent loud applause and laughter.

Fox wasn't laughing, however. "Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind," said a Fox News spokesperson. "We wish him well."

Turner's comment came just days after another Nazi reference to Fox.

Gilmore Girls Executive Producer Amy Sherman-Palladino had some choice words for Fox's American Idol at a WB panel at the critics tour in L.A. Saturday. (Both shows air Tuesday at 8 p.m.) American Idol is like the Nazis marching through Poland," she said. "You just got to let them go. Get out of the way. We're kind of France going, 'You know, just don't burn down Paris, that's all we're asking.'" Asked by one of her shows' co-stars, Lauren Graham, if that was really the analogy she wanted to go with, Sherman-Palladino said that's how she saw it.