Alan Jones’ new porkies test: fact-checker for shock jock
| MATTHEW KNOTT Crikey media journalist |
| EMAIL | COMMENT |
| 2GB, ALAN JONES |
Alan Jones’ editorial comments will be fact-checked before going to air, under a deal struck between 2GB management and the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
The controversial broadcaster will also undergo training to ensure his on-air statements are factually accurate and that he understands the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice.
2GB, Sydney’s top-rating network, will also have to make greater efforts to ensure the station presents a range of viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance.
The agreement — detailed by ACMA this morning — tops off a torrid month for Jones, whose show has been hit by an advertiser exodus following public uproar about his statement that Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father died of shame. Earlier this month, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ordered Jones to apologise on air and in writing for describing Lebanese Muslims in Sydney as “vermin” and “mongrels” in 2005.
The 2GB/ACMA deal follows a June finding that Jones breached the broadcasting code by claiming human beings produce only 0.001% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ACMA found that statement, made on air in 2011, was unsubstantiated and 2GB had not made “reasonable efforts” to ensure its accuracy.
2GB admitted to the media watchdog that “no research was conducted by staff and that Mr Jones researched the figures himself”. A 2GB review subsequently found the station does have fact-checking measures in place, but that Jones’ editorial pieces do not always include the involvement of his wider editorial team.
Jones was also found guilty of breaching accuracy requirements in 2009 comments about a missing Irish national and 2010 comments about native vegetation.
Among the measures to be implemented by 2GB are:
- Pre-broadcast fact-checking, by the program’s executive producer, of any material provided by third parties and any editorial pieces scripted by Jones.
- Identification, by the executive producer, of controversial issues of public importance that are not covered by other 2GB current affairs programs.
- Communication of these exceptions to 2GB’s program director who will then be responsible to ensure that another current affairs program presents an alternative significant viewpoint to that presented in the program hosted by Jones so that 2GB can discharge its obligations under the codes.
- Creation and retention (for at least six weeks) of records of the verification material sourced by the executive producer for the facts contained in the editorial pieces.
- Training will be conducted (including with Jones) focusing on the ACMA findings concerning factual accuracy and significant viewpoints.
2GB has not responded to Crikey‘s requests for comment.
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Well… it’s a pity they won’t just sack him; it says something about his degree of political and public support, I suppose, and that is a whole ‘nother worry all on its own!
But at least they’re sending him back to school for remedial lessons… like a naughty little schoolboy!
Funny isn’t it, how the so-called ‘elite’ always treat each other like naughty schoolboys when they’ve fallen from grace, whilst they treat anyone of us plebs like terrorists should we get into similar straits.
One law for them… and another one for us…
😐
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The problem is Asty is that its a significant shareholder in the network, so you could say their rise and fall are interdependent.
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Indeed, Algae… As the saying goes, “Money talks, and bullshit walks…”
😉
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I still think and hope, perhaps with an optimism bordering on a forlorn and fading trust in mankind, that inevitably, pigeons come home to roost. In Alan Jones case, the pigeons will be in the form of a lonely and bitter end. “What a miserable life you have lived Mr Jones they will be cooing accusatory.” “Why the need to crush the hopeful, the progressives and those with some vision?” “Why the dribbling spittle with hateful references to all that is base and your need to appeal to lower than the lowest ?
Make good, repent, admit to mistakes. The pigeons will be dipping their beaks, beckoning Mr Jones. He might just spread rat poison though, as always is his addiction to hurt overriding the world he lives in.
Of course, a dream only held by fools like myself. He will probably whoop it up with his likewise minded friends. The only consolation is that he will slowly be seen as an outdated fool of a man. A man who achieved nothing except a fat bankbook and gold-plated tea spoons, a chandelier with bangles and the coffee table full of remotes.
Ah, he might well revisit the days of former glory spinning the old video over and over again, watching his days of glory at 2GB. What a waste it all has all been! And yet, what will be those last moments, the very moment of the dip of the wick of a flickering candle? Any recognition or insight then, Mr Jones?
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“Why the dribbling spittle with hateful references to all that is base and your need to appeal to lower than the lowest ?”
Gerard, I think I can answer the above:
Such pandering to all that is lowest and basest in, not only in ‘human nature’, but also and more particularly, in our society’s culture, is a tactical manoevre well-known to the ancients long before Adolf Hitler rediscovered how it’s done. How does a nonentity get so popular as to be elected to such high office that changing the whole nature of his country becomes not only possible, but easy?
The fact is that, by appealing to all those most base and vicious appetites from the darker side of our humanity, from a position of (even if it is ‘self-assumed’) authority, it gives people permission to indulge in those same appetites… the cultivation of a violent and vile aesthetic is an easy road to popularity, which then translates easily into political influence and even political power. And of course, in order to facilitate this you’ll need plenty of scapegoats to take the blame for all the damage you will do on your road to the top… and it’s handy if those scapegoats belong to an easily recognizable and distinguishable social group; the Jews were convenient for Adolf; Islam is convenient for AJ, though, like Adolf, AJ’s not too fussy and will scapegoat anyone who is deemed an ‘outsider’ to his own ‘peer group’; in short, anyone who disagrees with him.
This is why I have said, and will keep on saying that our whole social process is an ongoing socio-processual scapegoat ritual; that even in the 21st century we are still practicing such barbarities as scapegoat rituals and all kinds of other cannibalistic social practices we normally associate with ‘primitive’ societies… and these practises keep us locked in a self-perpetuating and inherently abusive status quo; our society is full of abusive people because it is itself intrinsically abusive as the result of thousands of years of the enculturation of abuse within an overarching sacrificial ideology derived from a cosmological process which revolves around a human sacrifice/scapegoat ritual.
Unless the problem of abuse is addressed at this ideational and cosmological level – and I mean GLOBALLY – nothing will ever change as this abusive system will continue to perpetuate itself… and if that happens I think we have less than a fifty-fifty chance, as a species, of surviving into the 22nd century…
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I mentioned to Persecuted the other day; it’s not that I’m dumb it just takes me a little longer.
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
It occurs to me that Matthew 18:20 might be apposite with respect to the idea that Jones will turn up to the opening of a letter provided there’s ego mileage involved.
I want you to put yourself in the mindset of Jones. There you are at the lectern that night, no fee, it’s the Sydney U Liberals, you’re among friends, looking out at your adoring audience, lips aquiver with anticipatory excitement.
You begin and they all laugh at the jokes; all at the expense of predominantly women or the broad progressive movement. They are warming up to you as you are to them. There’s a growing tumescense in your loins. Look at all those ripe twenty somethings, thay just love you.
Why not take it further? Why not take it too far? The speech segues almost imperceptably into open misogyny, your second most favourite theme after bashing the progressives with half arsed lies and unchecked and incorrect factoids. No-one’s listening who might take exception and you know from experience that something is only wrong if you get caught. That’s what being an amoral, self absorbed creep is all about. So you deliver that now deathless line. The audience’s gasps and indrawn breath you put down to their realisation that you’re the only one in the room brave enough to say the truth. It would never occur to you that even members or guests of the Sydney U Liberals might think that your comments might be a little ill considered. You’re Alan Jones; it’s simply not possible that you might be wrong or may have overstepped the invisible line that takes you ineluctably and irretrievably into the open ground of the killing fields of social media. You’re too old and fixed to have ever thought that you’re vulnerable there, that the MSM is on its last legs and fast losing any credibility it may have once had to be the arbiter of public opinion. You’re Alan Jones and you’re dwindling audience hang on your every poison word. It’s grotesque codependent dysfunction, but you think it’s your life’s destiny. What a pointless life!
I really do hope he got some pants action that night because from here on the rest is all downside, hopefully to a protracted and difficult dying filled with self loathing and bitter regret. Though, like the expectation that ACMA’s new regulations will have any probative effect, that probably won’t happen. He has after all made a fortune from the vitriol he’s peddled all these years. He’ll be surrounded by all the good friends and care money can buy.
But he’ll still be Alan Jones.
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Yours is a useful combination of role play and psychology delivered from the lectern of the imagination, barely prefaced and slavers, relishes cause and effect, Googlehoover. I enjoyed reading that. To think I missed the evening, any one of us. Ought to write somethink you oughter. 😉
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I’d like to echo ‘Shoe’s encouragement to submit an article, Googlehoover… and I’d like to apologize for having mistaken you for our Julian the other day… I should have known better; Julian’s posts are always short to the point of terseness, but you have a tendency, similar to my own, towards garrulousness and prolixity, if not actually sesquipedaelianism…
Only way to make ‘Alan Jones’ not ‘Alan Jones’, I suppose, were it possible, would be to separate him from his wealth… Were he to go broke, it might be intresting to see how many of his supporters continue to be such… (or perhaps I’m just incurably optimistic! And in any case, I’d just like to see it happen!)
😉
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I have better (friendlier) conversations with Milo than on internet blogs with so called people, he knows when I am sad or upset, I don’t need to call in the Moderators, he also knows many words in many languages, he doesn’t need to look into Dictionary to know what words mean, words like; sad, kind, civil, misogyny, sexism….
You tell him to stay ‘upstairs ‘and he runs up…
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Yes, but some animals speak without using language. Words are superfluous for Milo and has taught us a bit about a much more subtle way of getting things done and for us to obey him without making us feel guilty.
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Direct communication, Gerard, the eyes and the body language maybe. 🙂
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Yeah, like that’s ever going to work.
But this is interesting.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121016-is-language-unique-to-humans
Mmmmmmmm………,
But I doubt my dog could be as nasty or as emotionally unintelligible as Jones often is, checked or unchecked.
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Very good Googlehoover!
I like that some of the advertisers have pulled their advertising for a second time and berated the station for allowing their advertisements on his program.
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I’m across that, Googlehoover…as if it will likely work. Anyway, what use is a 6 weeks holding of creation and retention records to verify material sourced for facts. It seems it took the Tribunal years to get around to a finding regards the vulgar “vermin” and “mongrel’ commentary, setting aside the producer won’t ever come up with verification to make shocking and hurtful comment like it ok. And how does an individual who thinks it is ok stop uttering commentary like it. Beats me.
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I watched Stephen Fry’s Planet World about Language last week, each episode a couple of times. I think it makes the point well about the limit of the communication of the animal vis-a-vis humans, not suggesting there are not oodles of noodling to do about animal language including our own in reference to instinct and visual cues.
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I have watched Stephen Fry’s programs on language,on African wildlife, on depression, and of course QI, and seen him play a country lawyer…is there anything that this man can’t do…also reading his autobiographies, I think I’m getting all fried up…
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He’s the real mixed grill, Helvi, perhaps we could suggest, the authentic snag and eggs?
I wonder the mistress, by his own admission I bet, of the dooob-l’ entend-r’ … I imagine him saying that with that witty and lilting tongue … and a kind heart, Helvi. He seems so kind. I think I’m a bit keen to get into some more of his Kingdom, now I think on it that I’ve not seen every episode. 🙂
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That series on Language did me a world of good, Helvi. In his opening he describes 7,000 languages and a few billion speakers and goes on to describe most of us perform language without giving it a second thought. Lord knows (no, Fry would know) how scarey I have experienced it attempting to explain to professionals I deal with that my experience of speech is strained, because it is not naturally executed but practised to overcome its deterioration and who knows why.
Not to put too fine a point on it and not to bang on, Fry has so many skills and talents it is hard to imagine a world without him. He is ‘everyman’ I think in some important ways that he seeks to show others knowledge. It was a big help to me hearing him describe language and the function of speech in his kindly manner…
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Maybe there is something regards how we respond to being behind a microphone in a radio station, including that a radio jock has to remain cogent and recall they are not talking exclusively to themselves and simply venting or barking…like in a shower at the end of a hard day or at a rival dog on the perimeter.
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