GPB’s Board Meets This Week, a Look Back at Recent Events with the Help of Some Open Records Requests
The Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission meets this Tuesday for the first time since controversial programming changes were implemented in June, including the cancellation of Political Rewind with Bill Nigut.
However, the meeting, set for Tuesday at 1 p.m., will be virtual, not in person, meaning Commissioners can’t be approached afterwards with any questions left unaddressed.
The Commission last met in April and did not take questions, ending the public portion with an Executive Session.
In July, the related GPB Foundation board met virtually.
Until I inquired, this week’s meeting was listed as Wednesday August 29th. The 29th is Tuesday. The Commission normally meets on Wednesdays but that would be the 30th. The day has since been corrected to Tuesday and its format updated to “virtual.”
I’ve emailed questions to GPB hoping the board will address them. They’re a state commission not a private club.
Questions emailed to GPB ahead of its board meeting this Tuesday.
Was the cancellation of Political Rewind a demand or even a strong suggestion of any members of the state legislature?
What is the future of GPB on WRAS?
The AJC’s quick hiring of Bill Nigut again calls into question the AJC’s presence on GPB since his show began. Was Mr. Nigut working for Cox all along?
Has the AJC been fair in its coverage of the show’s cancelation or skewed it in its own favor?
Also, this plan to make up for the state budget cut mentions an “Other Funds Shortfall” of $2.5 million. What is that number based on?
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Let the Open Records Show
Documents obtained through an Open Records Request flesh out the timeline of the cancelation:
GPB Executive Vice President Adam Woodlief emailed Bill Nigut Friday afternoon June 9th asking to meet on Monday.
On the following Friday June 16th, GPB put out a press release with the programming changes, but it was preempted by Nigut and his panelists.
That afternoon GPB President Bert Wesley Huffman sent out an email to GPB staff with the press release and the subject line “Today.”
“Know this — These decisions are our own. They are done so because GPB has a mission to serve the community across ALL platforms…. We cannot be boiled down to one single thing.”
… “Simply changing nothing and leaving a multi-million dollar hole in our budget and hoping we will find the funds to cover it is negligent of the public trust and haphazard, risky management.”
“The words I share about our colleague, Bill Nigut, in the attached press release are not words crafted for me. They are my genuine expression of thanks for what he has brought to this company…. These decisions are not personal. We are all in this together. GPB is bigger than any one of us.”
“NEVER forget your value to GPB. And never forget that my door is open to you at any point to discuss these changes, future direction of this company or anything that’s on your mind. Regardless of where you reside in the building, you are GPB, and you are of great value to this organization. I mean that sincerely.”
In his response, Nigut thanked Huffman for letting him break the news to his regular panelists first and the press release included a quote from him saying “While I’m moving on from Georgia Public Broadcasting, I am not retiring from a professional life, and will continue working in some role moving forward.”
The AJC called the show’s cancellation surprising and unexpected. Yet talks between the paper and Nigut appear to have been ongoing. From its story on the cancellation:
Kevin Riley, the AJC’s recently retired top editor, was a frequent panelist and occasional fill-in host. “I can’t imagine political coverage in Georgia without hearing Bill Nigut’s voice,” he said. “We have worked together to make sure Georgians get the insight that they deserve as our state finds itself at the center of every important issue.
A separate ORR for communications between GPB and the AJC show Nigut telling weekly panelist Greg Bluestein in April that “the new powers that be at our place have decreed” that only GPB journalists could serve as guest hosts.
The emails also show podcast discussions and planning by AJC editor Kevin Riley, Bill Nigut and Nigut’s son.
Asked if those emails referred to a GPB or AJC podcast a spokesperson for GPB responded, “The attached email referenced regarding a podcast meeting between Bill Nigut, his son, and Kevin Riley, was not related to any work or business with Georgia Public Broadcasting.”
The AJC did not respond to a similar question.
Earlier this month, the paper announced it had hired Bill Nigut to serve as a co-host of its own political podcast.
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“Both Sides”
The AJC’s coverage alleged Nigut’s cancellation was a demand of far-right Republicans angry that his show excluded election deniers.
That’s very possible and raises concerns about political interference or intimidation of media in Georgia.
As part of its defense of the Republican electors indicted along with former President Trump by Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, the current state party chair, not the indicted former one, has heavily criticized media coverage especially by the AJC.
Nigut’s regular panelists did skew toward Democrats with several elected officials among them.
For Republicans, its regulars were consultants, strategists, or former elected officials turned Dentons lobbyists. The kind of Establishment pre-2016 party leaders Trump supporters often disparage.
In a May response to previous questions about the budget cut to GPB, but before the programming changes were announced in June, State Sen. Nan Orrock said in an email:
“Without a crystal ball, there’s a lot of speculation but few hard facts. The Senate leadership instituted the cut with an inexplicable comment that other broadcasters thought it was unfair to “pick a winner” so they cut the money that was in the governor’s proposed budget. The House then conceded and supported the cut in the conference committee negotiations between the two chambers. And the Gov. signed the budget which made it official.
“…There is no way to conclude that this was retaliation for GPB reporting. Everyone in the Senate voted for the final budget so in that sense it had bipartisan support. But strictly speaking, if one has secured a budget request, one would typically vote for the budget despite any disagreements one might have with a particular budget item.”
The now prominent “Both Sides” criticism of media argues that when one side embraces lies and disinformation they should no longer be treated as credible.
Journalists refusing to have on guests who will lie is seen as embracing a bias towards democracy.
But it can also reinforce the criticism of the media as self-righteous or self-serving gate keepers.
The answer for a public broadcaster might be less punditry and horse race political coverage altogether.
Political Rewind’s use of elected Dems as panelists also could skew the debate within that side.
An email from Dekalb County Commissioner Ted Terry asks to be on to discuss “Cop City” and a legal challenge to a permit approved by the county’s CEO Michael Thurmond.
A search finds Terry wasn’t a guest on the show this year while Thurmond was a Political Rewind regular.
More recent emails to both the Georgia Democratic and Republican state parties asking for comment were not returned.
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From #SaveWRAS to #StopCopCity
The radio battle between GPB and WABE, licensed to the Atlanta Public Schools, began in 2014 when the state network obtained daytime control of Georgia State University’s iconic college radio station WRAS in an agreement announced during finals week.
The secret, backroom deal with little transparency and no student input quickly sparked a public backlash. That included protests, alternative proposals, public comments at board meetings, an appeal to the Board of Regents, and pleas to public officials.
None of which worked.
Instead, Atlanta’s politicians, academics, and journalists paid lip service to the protests, if at all, and gravitated towards GPB’s new radio outlet to be guest experts, analysts, and pundits.
That included AJC journalists who used to cover GPB as a state agency, a former Democratic congressman turned lobbyist who served on GPB’s Foundation board, political science professors and other academics who would soon marvel at Bernie Sanders’ inexplicable popularity and be shocked by Donald Trump’s election.
In class terms, a resource meant for GSU students, independent and local musicians was being taken over by Georgia’s political and media elite as a platform for themselves.
Viewed that way, the #SaveWRAS efforts weren’t partisan but populist, not Democrat vs. Republican but the people vs. “The Atlanta Way.”
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Along with this month’s AJC announcement, WABE said it would welcome Bill Nigut back to the airwaves by airing the AJC show on its own station this fall.
In essence, the same relationship between a public broadcaster and privately owned (by Georgia’s richest family) newspaper will shift from the state-run network to a station licensed to the Atlanta Public Schools.
But now the AJC will produce the program outright.
Whether WABE news staffers are happy about their station’s new AJC partnership, I can’t say, but noticed last Wednesday’s Closer Look program included an interview with independent-minded local journalist John Rich about his “Cop City” reporting and his profile of Cox family dissident James “Fergie” Chambers.
The WABE discussion included criticism of the AJC and praise for the burgeoning of small, independent newsrooms that have started in Atlanta often in response to legacy media’s “Cop City” coverage.
(Disclosure: Chambers contributed $600 to my own crowdfunding for these GPB-AJC Open Records Requests.)
A related rift has opened between organizers active in a “Stop Cop City” referendum effort and elected Democrats seen as too deferential to corporate interests.
The activists have been criticizing “The Atlanta Way” head on, pointing out insider connections, conflicts of interest, and lax transparency while disputing, even ridiculing, media narratives and “respectability politics.”
They’ve also insisted on a “multitude of tactics.”
To a public radio nerd raised on Garrison Keillor and “Adventures in Good Music,” that sounds radical and even ominous. But it’s hard to say they’re wrong.