Cox and Friends Goes to Washington
And Befriends Marjorie Taylor Greene
At the end of January, just as the founding host of its daily politics podcast Politically Georgia finally retired, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced it was taking the show to Washington D.C. for a live event with high-profile guest Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
While other newspapers are cutting D.C. bureaus, the AJC is investing in owning Georgia politics as a beat, “from Peachtree St. to Pennsylvania Ave.”
Attendees, would also get the chance to see the paper’s leadership team of Editor-in-Chief Leroy Chapman, Jr. and Publisher Andrew Morse, whom NPR described in an August 2024 profile as “bold and buoyant and ebullient. He operates with a personal touch, showing up routinely at company softball games and civic events, meeting all 400 employees in small groups and dinners, writing front-page editorials and insisting on the need to change the culture.”
(I’m not in D.C. and did not attend the event but am basing this article on the AJC’s promotions for the event, the podcast and transcript itself, and the AJC’s post-interview framing of it all.)
After the original announcement that Greene would be a guest, CNN anchors Dana Bash and Kasie Hunt were added for a panel about the media and covering “Trump 2.0.” Those weren’t surprising additions since Morse is a former top executive at CNN, having spearheaded its expensive but short-lived CNN+ digital transformation effort.
The CNN anchors were included in a promotion for the event in the Monday Feb. 3rd edition of the Politically Georgia newsletter, a Politico-like morning email that trades on “scoops, gossip and insider info.”
Greene and NPR
That same morning Greene sent a letter as chair of the House Government Oversight’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the heads of NPR and PBS asking them to testify at a hearing in March.
“‘The Subcommittee is concerned by National Public Radio’s (NPR) blatantly ideological and partisan coverage and looks forward to your participation in our upcoming hearing. The Subcommittee seeks to better understand NPR’s position on providing Americans with accurate information,’ wrote Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene in a letter to NPR. ‘This hearing is an opportunity for you to explain to Congress and the American people why federal funds should be used for public radio — particularly the sort of content produced by NPR.’”
By Wednesday, the AJC had added NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday anchor Ayesha Rascoe to the media panel.
Rascoe had previously appeared on Politically Georgia to promote a book.
Politically Georgia the podcast also airs as a radio show on Atlanta NPR member station WABE and is similar to a show aired on state-run Georgia Public Broadcasting beginning in 2014.
That followed GPB’s entry into Atlanta radio, in direct competition with WABE, through a controversial agreement with Georgia State University giving GPB daytime control of the student-funded WRAS, an influential 100,000-WATT college radio station that was a pillar of Atlanta’s local music scene.
A populist #SaveWRAS backlash foreshadowed later anger at the media but was largely ignored by NPR. A second NPR news station in Atlanta also came at the expense of GPB creating local programming at stations in the rest of the state, such as WGPB in Rome, in MTG’s district.
AJC journalists and editors were “guests” from the start. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is owned by Cox Enterprises which in 2014 also owned WSB TV and radio and 4 other radio stations in Atlanta. This led me to start calling the radio show “Cox and Friends” to highlight the parallels with “Fox and Friends” and the conflicts of interest that arise from concentrated media ownership and an incestuous media culture.
(Cox sold a majority stake in its broadcast stations to Apollo Global Management during the first Trump administration but retains a minority stake as well as legacy, cross-promotional ties.)
MTG and the AJC
The event marked Greene’s 1st appearance on the show in any of its iterations. Gone were the paper’s past descriptors of her as fringe or “far-right.” Now she was “not just an ally of President Trump, but a friend on the inner circle…”
For her part, Greene had frequently criticized the AJC and its political reporters as on a July 2021 appearance on War Room with Steve Bannon (no relation!) which, at the time, also aired on Atlanta radio station AM1690.
“Steve, I’m telling you, I have been laughing so hard, because everything that we have known in Georgia and I’ve been one of the few people actually coming out and saying, Look, Georgia was stolen. I know for a fact President Trump won, none of us believe that Biden won Georgia and there was real election fraud. Now it’s coming out and it’s so funny that the AJC had to report today that there were 1000s of ballots that were scanned twice, and they have been covering up the lies as a matter of fact, the AJC the Atlanta Journal and constitution, we love to call it the Atlanta urinal and constipation. But yeah, they’ve been twisting and turning the truth for a long time. And it’s so much fun watching the truth come out. I particularly don’t like Greg Bluestein. He reports politics in Georgia, and he his job and his goal is to turn Georgia blue. And all he does is twist and turn and lie and make things make stories appear one way when that’s not really the truth. And you know, that’s not what journalism is supposed to be about. That’s not what newspapers are supposed to do. They’re supposed to report the news, instead of being a political activist, but that’s who the Atlanta Journal and constipation is. And I love to say it that way, because that’s who they are. They really don’t care about the news in Georgia. They really don’t care about the facts and the truth, they only care about their communist agenda. Because even one of the billionaire heirs to the to their gigantic fortune, the family that owns the Atlanta Journal and, and Constitution is a Antifa communist. He says it all the time on his social media. And this is just the truth that people need to understand.”
Greene’s last reference to a communist heir refers to James Cox “Fergie” Chambers who is indeed a self-described communist and critic of America, who divorced from the Dynasty, has funded leftist groups, and now lives abroad.
But he also owned a gym MTG worked out at and accused her of having affairs with trainers.
In the podcast interview, neither Greene nor the paper brought up any past criticisms of each other.
Tia Mitchell: “Rep. Greene, thank you for being here with us.”
MTG: “Thank you for having me. Thank you for making it easy and coming to Washington.”
Tia Mitchell: “We have been trying to get you on the show. This is your Politically Georgia debut, and it’s happening here in Washington.”
The first question was an opportunity for Greene to praise Trump:
Tia Mitchell: “Of the things that Pres. Trump has already announced or executive orders, what do you think is the most consequential…?”
MTG: “Oh that’s tough….”
Not all the questions were softballs, and she was asked about the NPR funding, if delicately:
Patricia Murphy: “One of the actions that your Doge subcommittee has just announced is a hearing to investigate NPR and PBS…We’re broadcast on an NPR station in Atlanta, as you may know. Is your goal to zero out funding, federal funding, for PBS and NPR?
MTG: “Well, you know, American taxpayers and both Rep. voters, Dem voters, independents and non-voters. A lot of those funds that have been used for NPR and PBS have produced far left publications, broadcasting. They didn’t cover very important stories like the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“They completely dismissed it during a very important election year. I look forward to having them come before by subcommittee and explain not only to the committee, but also to the American people, why do they deserve the American people’s tax dollars if they’re going to use it to spread propaganda for the Democrat party? They should be bipartisan in the very least.
“But again, Patricia, we’re $36 trillion in debt. I think a lot of news and press, which are extremely important, and I support that, they don’t have to be funded by the federal government.”
Tia Mitchell: “And I know we’re running out of time, and I want to ask you about 2026. But before we move on from radio, public television, if they show you examples where they covered Hunter Biden’s laptop or covered President Trump in a way that you think is positive, is that enough to kind of change your outlook?
MTG: “Well, we’ll have the hearing and we’ll see what happens.”
Tia Mitchell: “All right.”
Greene was then asked about running for higher office in 2026 which became the headline in the show’s Friday morning newsletter and the story the AJC framed as the biggest to come out of the interview.
In the newsletter she was described as “one of the most well-known members of Congress in the country” and someone “the left loves to hate.”
The AJC’s framing of “Greene leaves door open for 2026” was soon picked up by other outlets, not the NPR comments which the paper left out of its newsletter.
NPR’s Response to Greene
After receiving Greene’s letter, NPR released a statement sighting its commitment to journalistic integrity including having a Public Editor “a position relinquished by all other major news organizations — that allows the public to inquire directly about NPR’s journalism.”
“We constantly strive to hold ourselves to the highest standards of journalism, as evidenced by our publicly available standards and ethics guidelines, the presence of a Public Editor — a position relinquished by all other major news organizations — that allows the public to inquire directly about NPR’s journalism, and strong editorial processes that provide oversight of the entire newsgathering process, including a final review of the nearly 2,000 pieces of journalism aired or published by our newsroom every month.”
It’s true most other news orgs have abandoned the public editor position, including the AJC.
But from my experience, NPR’s public editor’s office has been unable or unwilling to comment on political interference at GPB or on the billionaire-owned AJC’s use of GPB and WABE as platforms. That includes a request for comment sent last week ahead of Greene and Rascoe’s appearances on the AJC show.
A diminished WABE would leave Cox outlets like its right-wing talk station WSB and the AJC even more dominant. Just as the AJC actively courts MTG.
“Media Powerhouses”
In the panel segment with two CNN anchors and NPR’s Rascoe, the tone was chummy, and the kind of mutual admiration society critics of the media roll their eyes at, but did include acknowledgment that they’ve lost trust. In part by such a club-like atmosphere, but also Republican attacks over the years.
Rascoe said “I think we have to try to be as transparent as we possibly can be and try to give as much information about not just what we know, but how we know it and how we do our jobs to try to help build back some of that trust.”
Asked about NPR being called to MTG’s subcommittee, Rascoe answered:
“Well, I should say, I do not speak for NPR” and “the coverage of hearings and things like that, we will cover that the way we cover all media, and we have specific teams that do that and firewalls and what have you.
“So, saying that that I got to get that out the way. Um but I will say for myself, does it change the way we do our work? We want to do the very best work that we can do. We’re not trying to shy away from stories. And one thing I love about NPR is and as, as you know, you here will know because you have local member stations you broadcast on a local member station.
“Is that we have member stations all over the country. We get, we talk to people. We have voices from people all over the country all the time and that is what I love about NPR is that if you go to Milwaukee, you have member station reporters, who know About Milwaukee and they will get and they know their communities intimately and that’s what we bring online.”
NPR’s coverage of Cox as media owner has been lax, with the Morse profile last August only stating “Morse has won major runway from the paper’s longtime owners, one of the richest families in the country, the Cox family. It’s willing to invest up to $150 million.”
It didn’t mention how Cox got their wealth, whether their business interests ever conflict with news coverage, or how the AJC handles those conflicts. It also made no mention of the paper’s involvement in Atlanta’s NPR affiliates.
A longer, revised version of the story aired in November, just after the election. It dropped the “bold and buoyant and ebullient” language, disclosed that’s its podcast airs on WABE, and added a brief statement from Cox CEO Alex Taylor and a comment from Morse that he “shields the newsroom from political or corporate pressures, including any potential pressure over coverage of the Cox family’s holdings” that linked to one of my Medium articles.
Still, this longer article was promoted by the AJC including on its WABE show in its own interview with Morse last Nov. who praised NPR’s media reporter.
“…it was a really terrific piece. I thought the reporter, David Folkenflik, did a really great job of capturing our mission and, you know, to our listeners listening to this on WABE and NPR.”
The AJC courting Greene should be viewed alongside Cox’s Axios efforts to get scoops, gossip, and insider info surrounding the Trump administration.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/axios-covering-donald-trumps-second-term.
Cox purchased Axios in 2023 for $525 Million. That’s almost as much as the annual federal funding for the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
With the Cox investment, and a recent one from Open AI, Axios has launched local newsrooms in several cities. Ostensibly to “save local journalism” they would also compete with local NPR stations or other non-profit news organizations.
Separately, Trump’s new head of the FCC Brendan Carr has announced an investigation into NPR stations for underwriting that crosses over into commercial advertising.
By that thinking the for-profit AJC having a show on non-profit public radio, with its own ads, could raise similar concerns. AJC journalists making daily appearances on GPB on WRAS beginning in 2014 never raised FCC scrutiny despite Cox owning multiple commercial stations in Atlanta.
The whole effort of the D.C. trip seems to be to reassert the AJC as arbiter of politics in Georgia, even under a 2nd Trump term, and that it’s political journalism should be seen as a peer with “media powerhouses” CNN and NPR.
But without the same degree of accountability those outlets face from media reporters, watchdogs, ethicists, Congress or the FCC.
