Cox City Media Chronicles

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed a full-page editorial by its President and Publisher Andrew Morse in its Sunday edition this weekend in support of the Public Safety Training Center and condemning violent extremists holding it back.

The paper’s support for the project, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents, isn’t new. It ran multiple columns and editorials pushing for it even before Morse became publisher this past January.

But the new column and condemnation of extremists follows a resolution passed by Georgia’s state Senate this week.

The essay was quickly criticized by opponents of “Cop City” with the Vote to Stop Cop City account on X, formerly Twitter, noting it didn’t disclose ties between the paper’s parent company and the project and that Morse “calls voters & civil rights leaders ‘Violent Extremists.’”

In fact, Morse’s piece does try to differentiate between “reasonable critics” of the project and unreasonable ones and later calls on the reasonable to condemn the others.

“What our city needs now is for reasonable people to separate themselves from extremists. The site has been selected, the funds have been deployed, construction has begun and it is set to conclude by the end of next year.”

“Stop Cop City” activists have often touted a “multitude of tactics” and an unwillingness to denounce or answer for anyone else.

And yet for all its attempt at nuance, the AJC’s new editorial still comes across as self-serving.

It quickly acknowledges problems in how leaders have pushed the project saying the previous and current mayors and Atlanta police foundation “share the blame for a process that has, at times, lacked transparency, clear communication and accountability.”

Yet Cox Enterprises and the AJC are exempt from any critique, despite Cox CEO Alex Taylor serving as lead fundraiser for the private part of the public-private partnership, the James M. Cox Foundation donating $10 million to the project, and the AJC and other Cox outlets shaping much of the local discussion.

Often in what looked like coordinated public relations campaigns.

In criticizing the unreasonable critics, it paints most as outsiders who don’t know the real Atlanta. Vote to Stop Cop City was also quick to point out Morse has lived in Atlanta less than a year.

Certainly “Stop Cop City” has become a leftist cause célèbre, with national outlets and social media hashtags eagerly joining in. But local activists have often cited the need to get national interest and attention to shift the narrative within Cox-dominated local media.

Morse claims that the outside agitators don’t understand Atlanta. He notes

“Our African-American Democratic mayor, our white conservative Republican Governor, and our openly gay police chief all stood before community leaders at the annual ‘Crime is Toast’ breakfast in September and sung from the same hymnal.”

But that top-down consensus culture, also known as “The Atlanta Way,” is a central facet of much of the local opposition. A long-simmering frustration at the city’s public-private rule by elite that has too often ignored those most affected and uses access-friendly media to “manufacture consent.”

The critique is that the hymnal they all sing from is published by Cox.

The piece does support allowing a referendum to move forward if enough petition signatures are verified but otherwise offers no suggestions for a compromise such as building at a different location.

Morse includes loss of trust in a free and independent press as a victim of the controversy and specifically criticizes Gov. Kemp for blaming “’The Atlanta paper’ for pushing an agenda to support the protesters.”

I’m not sure where Kemp has said that but wouldn’t be surprised. Kemp has fundraised off the issue,

but he maintains an access relationship with various tentacles of the Cox conglomerate, appearing on WSB radio and making EV manufacturing and Rivian, which Cox is an investor in, a centerpiece of his Governorship.

(Mayor Dickens added a Rivian to the city fleet too.)

In his leadership committee’s Atlanta Public Safety Center fundraising email, if you click through to the donation link an AJC headline about Kemp’s position serves as its letterhead.

Conservative denunciations of “the liberal media” are several generations old now, a regular part of Republican party politics and the business model for right-wing media, including WSB radio.

But it’s on the left that Atlanta media is losing credibility over “Cop City.”

In August of 2021, I surveyed coverage of the debate and wondered if it made the case for an openly leftist local media. Not to replace mainstream outlets but provide an alternative to them, act as a counterweight to local talk radio, and to be more skeptical of “The Atlanta Way.”

We now have such local outlets in the likes of Mainline and the Atlanta Community Press Collective, the latter of which was first to point out discrepancies in the training center’s cited cost totals, something Morse cites as one reason for a loss of public trust.

But leftist local outlets aren’t going to criticize the left or cover key figures in a negative light even if newsworthy.

That brings up the Fergie factor.

One of the most prominent supporters and funders of the opposition to “Cop City” is dissident Cox heir James Fergie Chambers.

A self-described class traitor and communist, Chambers has also made controversial statements and engaged in direct actions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He’s been the subject of critical articles in local media outlets in Massachusetts, and conservative sites, but not in the AJC or other Atlanta outlets.

The local left hasn’t said much about him either. At least not publicly.

In a DM exchange on X, I asked Chambers if Atlanta’s at a point where both corporate and leftist outlets fear alienating one Cox or another.

He replied,

“I don’t think of things in liberal purisms. I want my info from those allied with the struggle I wage, not the enemy. I have no illusions of ‘unbiased’ anything. One activist having a good relationship with a group of activist journos is certainly worth an entire ruling class formation in bed with Cox.”

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Last Thursday WABE held its quarterly board meeting that included some discussion of its new partnership with the AJC.

Head of audio Scotty Crowe first praised WABE’s own daily shows including Closer Look with Rose Scott

“She and her team just continue to have outstanding responsive coverage to the issues that are on the minds of Atlantans across the city and across our community. Notably the Public Safety training center and just how quick they are to really have important conversations around that issue.”

Before then giving an update on the new AJC’s Politically Georgia.

While publicly available radio ratings showed an overall decline for WABE for the period including the show’s premiere, those did not include a break down by hour.

Crowe highlighted streaming numbers as an early sign of success.

“The early results that we can see from the first couple weeks of streaming is that we are seeing a 400% increase in listenership for the 10 o’clock hour over the previous program in that space, which was 1A. So, I think just an incredible response that we’re seeing from the jump. We’ll have our Nielsen ratings for this first month in December.”

Board chair Ken Bernhardt added: “

And think about the potential over the next year with the election and the trial and etc. going on. So, the potential is huge for this.”

I’m not surprised the local politics show did better than a national one, but I remain concerned about WABE becoming another tentacle of Cox, especially with both the company itself and a dissident heir actively at odds over an ongoing issue.

It’d be good to have a Cox neutral newsroom in Atlanta.