And the Horse Race You Rode in On
Drawn by Edward Williams Clay? Image from Library of Congress Digital Archives
Less than a year after canceling Political Rewind, the horse race politics show it kept expanding for nearly a decade, Georgia’s state-run public broadcaster Georgia Public Broadcasting is now joining the “no horse race” pledge in 2024.
In a post and survey on its website, GPB announced it’s partnering with America Amplified for an audience first approach to covering Georgia’s elections.
“As the country heads into the November 2024 election, Georgia remains in the national spotlight. Its status as a ‘battleground state’ means candidates and their surrogates will likely make several trips to the Peach State as they try to win your vote.
Historically, news organizations’ coverage of these visits by candidates tends to report on what politicians had to say and to whom they said it — aka ‘horse race coverage.’
GPB’s coverage for 2024 will be more focused on YOU, the voters. It’s part of our commitment to share stories that reflect the cities and towns that make up Georgia.
To help in this effort, GPB will be working with America Amplified, an organization partnering with public media newsrooms across the nation to more deeply engage the communities we serve.”
What a switch from a decade of directly competing with another public broadcaster in Atlanta and prioritizing a show serving lobbyists and insiders more than anything else.
America Amplified is a community engagement effort funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Begun in 2019, it “aims to help stations put people, not preconceived ideas, at the center of their reporting process.”
This effort may have sincere intentions, but to say I’m cynical is an understatement.
Ten years ago, GPB angered Atlanta with a secret, back-room deal that gave it daytime control of beloved college radio station WRAS in direct competition with an existing NPR affiliate WABE.
The community was never engaged and indeed launched an intense #SaveWRAS campaign the state’s media and political elite ignored.
NPR, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the larger public radio ecosystem did nothing either, showing more loyalty to a politically connected affiliate leader than to the public that affiliate was supposed to serve.
The populist backlash foreshadowed the current distrust of the media.
Indeed, Political Rewind debuted with host Bill Nigut and Atlanta Journal-Constitution Political Insider columnist Jim Galloway talking with two lobbyists from the same firm serving as the Democratic and Republican “balance.”
Talk about source diversity.
GPB partnering with America Amplified now is an acknowledgement of sorts of its own shrunken newsroom, with former CEO Teya Ryan and her loyalists mostly gone, its political reporter hired by NPR directly, and lots of turnover.
Oddly, America Amplified partnered with WABE in the past including using Closer Look host Rose Scott to co-host a national show of “dialogue, not debate” in the run-up to the 2020 election.
At the time, GPB’s main local programming was still the horse-race heavy Political Rewind, which I dubbed Cox and Friends for its role as an extension of Cox Enterprises’ media empire.
In another turnabout, WABE picked up Cox and Friends, now named Politically Georgia, last fall.
It’s ability to draw high profile guests like sitting Senators and national candidates or surrogates threatens to overshadow Rose Scott’s more community-based show.
Cox has a lot of friends in Georgia politics. Too bad it doesn’t have a non-commercial watch dog.
America Amplified insists, “The public service mission of public media includes meeting the information needs of all communities.”
But in Atlanta the mission of public radio for the last decade has been to amplify the AJC. Filling news deserts or reaching underserved audiences are fine, but preserving the dominance of a legacy local media oligarchy comes first.
I have no illusions: if Donald Trump is elected, he will seek to defund public radio and attack the mainstream media more harshly than his first term.
But this self-righteousness from public radio in its coverage of Georgia is going to be hard to swallow.
It’s reason enough to fear such pledges may be mere virtue signaling or covering their own asses from liberal listeners angry over negative stories about Biden’s age or that Trump keeps escaping accountability.
Does the media genuinely want to preserve Democracy or just to preserve its own privileged place within American society?
“Why are our institutions failing? Join us tomorrow when we’ll put your questions to several affluent, highly credentialed experts.”
In one sense, GPB joining the “no horse race” pledge is a swipe against WABE for doubling down on it, having picked up Politically Georgia and expanding its own Dem vs. Republican pundit podcast Political Breakfast.
But neither can plaster on a smile and say they’re serving the public over elites.
America Amplified is produced at WFYI in Indianapolis. Last week its newsroom announced a unionization effort.
In Georgia, neither GPB nor WABE are unionized. Nor is the AJC. Maybe Indiana journalists will be willing to hold Cox and Public Media executives in Georgia accountable. And cover Georgia’s media as a center of power itself. A part of the problem not just the unquestioned solution.
