Unwinding the AJC and GPB’s Political Marriage
On Friday, the same day Georgia Public Broadcasting aired the final episode of its Atlanta Journal-Constitution-affiliated radio show Political Rewind, an open records request for communications between the state-run network and AJC owner Cox Enterprises was delayed for a third time. The request, now unfilled after 3 months, would also cost more.
GPB announced the radio show’s cancellation mid-June after a March cut to its state budget and the April retirement of network CEO Teya Ryan.
The records request was filed May 3 and covered the period of March and April. It was modeled on a previous request and those found on MuckRock by Washington Post media reporter Jeremy Barr for communications between federal agencies and outlets like Fox News and CNN.
While GPB and the AJC are both news organizations, one is also a state agency with a history of political manipulation and the other is part of a local dynasty that’s abused its market dominance in the past.
The relationship between public officials and the press becomes a story itself if there are significant questions about the ethics involved and if the public interest gets lost in all the insider back scratching and stabbing.
In a previous attempt to figure out what was behind the cut to GPB, I speculated it could have been a proxy swipe at the paper over its relationship with the network.
In introducing the Senate’s budget, Appropriations Chair Blake Tillery held up a copy of the AJC before saying the state should not be “picking winners and losers.”
A follow-up records request about the cancellation of Political Rewind is currently set for return at the end of this month, but after the next scheduled GPB board meeting July 12th.
Since the program’s cancellation was made public, the AJC has run multiple articles and letters to the editor complimentary of the show and bemoaning its loss. All blame state republicans for Nigut’s “ousting.”
A June 21st column by Political Rewind regular Patricia Murphy frames it as the victim of cancel culture after barring election deniers from the show.
“There is no paper trail or smoking gun to connect that moment in 2021 to the day Nigut got fired. But it certainly made him the skunk at the party when the time came to decide which programs might keep lawmakers and the GOP-appointed board of GPB relaxed and happy at budget time.”
There was an attempt to cut GPB’s budget in 2021 and evidence, first reported by me, that its CEO Teya Ryan believed it was a “swipe” over a perceived liberal bias in its NPR radio programming. There was further evidence of retaliation against GPB’s political reporter who was barred from GOP events.
But the AJC did not report on the 2021 attempted budget cut at the time nor on the resignation of two GPB board members later that year or Gov. Kemp’s board appointments since.
They did maintain an almost daily presence on Political Rewind.
The paper has never adequately addressed the extent of its relationship with GPB that dates to its debut on Atlanta radio in 2014 after another scandal at the network.
In a sleazy backroom deal with Georgia State University that excluded student and public input, GPB was given daytime control of student-funded college radio station WRAS.
Nigut’s hiring by Teya Ryan in 2013 was part of the planning.
AJC reporters, including those that had been covering GPB as a state agency, were suddenly appearing on it.
In a 2014 AJC article about Nigut’s new shows on WRAS, a GPB publicist was allowed to sit in on the interview and steer away difficult questions.
This is the same GPB comms team the AJC is now criticizing for its lack of transparency while neglecting to answer questions itself, such as if it plans to hire Nigut to round out his Cox career.
The paper even used the same Nigut photo in both the 2014 and 2023 articles.
If GPB and Nigut are being punished by state leaders now, were they being rewarded then? Was the AJC?
The show’s cancellation may well be politically motivated, but Republicans have had control over state government since the early 2000s.
In 2004 GPB began leasing space to Fox News and in 2012 it agreed to hire the Senate’s Republican Majority Leader for a $150,000 a year job causing one GPB producer to quit in protest.
State Democrats and journalists criticizing the cancelation as political interference, seem selective in their outrage. That many are themselves Political Rewind regulars and enjoy an access relationship with the AJC undermines the argument.
There’s also evidence GPB was losing money on radio despite several years of billboard and bus campaigns in Atlanta.
Nigut was GPB’s highest paid journalist, and the resources devoted to keeping his show on the air came at the expense of other initiatives. If filling Georgia news deserts is part of GPB’s mission, eliminating its presence in Augusta while preserving a show in Atlanta that directly competes with a higher rated NPR affiliate seems counterproductive.
Neither GPB nor the AJC have responded to questions about Nigut’s future employment. Repeated questions over the years to the AJC about its relationship with GPB have also gone unanswered, making Open Records Requests necessary.
Nigut debuted on WRAS by displacing college students.
A blog post celebrating his own return to radio, and using that same picture, was quickly filled with negative comments noting its call for civility was masking the kind of backroom shenanigans that makes people angry to begin with. All comments were later deleted. Eventually, so was the blog post.
#SaveWRAS protests began as soon as the GSU agreement was announced and continued into 2015 while GPB was cementing its partnership with the AJC. In 2016 anger at the media and political establishments showed up in both party primaries.
Even for non-MAGA voters who may have gone back to brunch after the 2020 election, calls for “civility” after disruptive Supreme Court rulings seem entitled.
Nigut is now seventy-six and still doesn’t want to give up the mic. That may be behind the AJC’s PR blitz.
If the newspaper owned by the state’s richest family wants to pick up Political Rewind as a podcast, fine. But they could have done that in 2014 instead of gutting Album 88 and undermining everybody’s credibility in the process.
