When the move to boycott Alan Jones began a week or so ago, the ‘savvy’ conventional wisdom of media experts was that advertisers might pull their ads for a while, but that they would be back as soon the fuss died down. The recent examples of Rush Limbaugh and Kyle Sandilands were cited in support of this claim. I don’t know about Sandilands (is there any info on advertisers who publicly dropped him, then returned?) but I don’t think Limbaugh’s case supports this claim, and the decision of 2GB to run Jones ad-free makes it even more problematic.
In the US, it seems that, far from returning to Limbaugh, big corporations have concluded that advertising on hate radio of any kind is a losing proposition, now that people outside the immediate audience are paying attention to what they are doing. Far from returning to Limbaugh they are pulling ads across the board, in favor of straight news shows, or away from radio altogether. The new model for hate radio is narrowcasting, as practised by Glenn Beck, who relies on his own merchandise and small advertisers. That’s commercially viable in a country as big as the US, but it ensures that Beck remains a marginal figure, with none of the influence he had in his days with Fox. Limbaugh hangs on, but he’s a much diminished figure, who no longer inspires terror, even among Republicans.
The 2GB “ad-free” strategy seems like a panic move. The obvious problem is that you are either ad-free or you are not. So, presumably they are planning on a relaunch, in which a bunch of advertisers return simultaneously, and with a fair bit of publicity. If I were the PR director of a major national company, I don’t think I’d be keen to be part of that. So, their best bet is to line a bunch of rightwing small businesspeople who are willing to take one for the team. Perhaps that will carry him long enough for some bigger companies to sneak back, but I doubt it. The boycott campaigners are seeking commitments to stay away through 2013. With no ads running anyway, making such a commitment, and getting loads of good publicity as a result, seems like a no-brainer for most companies.
John Quiggin 
Muzzling Jones for political purposes may well be the motive of some signatories of the petitions in question. This is an entirely legitimate objective. So long as this campaign is peaceful and does not involve physical threats, Jones apologists have no valid grounds for complaint.
Jones is free to say what he likes within the bounds of criminal incitement and defamation. But with that freedom comes the responsibility of living with the consequences of those statements (so long as reactions to those statements are legal, as doubtless boycotts of Jones’ sponsors are. The distinction between a boycott and a blockade needs to be firmly indicated in this case.)
Doubt you will be brave enough to display that last comment. You’re a little control freak. Over on Crooked Timber, having written nonsense you then think you ought to have the right to rewrite a good critique of your nonsense written on another site.
Come on. Give me and everyone else a break.
@TerjeP
As it is largely a Sydney kerfuffle in my eyes (i mean the boycotting side of it), I am not doing anything in boycott terms. Like a lot of consumers, I will only boycott when I feel very strongly as boycotting can be personally inconvenient. I don’t argue that people boycott what I boycott although I might do so in some extreme civil liberty or public safety case.
I boycott food products from China and have done so for at least 5 years as I perceive they may be unsafe in some cases. I don’t say anything in the supermarket if I see a person pick up a food product from China.
Footnote:
I also “boycott” all hate radio and talk back radio as I thoroughly detest it, finding it excruciatingly boring and thoroughly embarrassing to experience. The same applies to all “reality” TV shows. But that’s a personal intellectual, aesthetic and even visceral choice so it scarcely qualifies as boycotting.
“A (disgusting) remark made in private”
alan jones’ opinion notwithstanding, a fundraising dinner attended by 100 odd people does not meet any normal person’s definition of “private”.
Experiment 2.
Show some spi ne man and ba n me. You know you really want to, b ad.
This making “suggestions” and then morphing them into edicts, the bizarre and rather cruel banning of Alice, the disemvow elling people, and other less than adult behaviour are why I lost all respect for you sometime ago.
So do the honorable thing; make my day. B an me outright. Much better than your current manipulative pathology.
Your blog. You can do it. Good you let punters know how you handle a little power.
No one should be foolish enough to give you a crown, absolutely and all that.
Fine, you’re banned.
It’s interesting that Mercedes-Benz was already moving to ditch its advertising on 2GB even before Jones’s ghoulish remarks became public. The company’s statement released yesterday shows that notice of termination under the advertising contract was given on 19 September and the sponsorship contract on 1 October (i.e. within 24 hours of publication in the Sunday Telegraph). Given that, Jones’s comments on the company’s executive’s ‘gutlessness’ in the face of a social media campaign are intentionally misleading and based on a lie about the actual chain of events.
I’m guessing there is confusion in the causal chain with many of the former advertisers’ decisions to cease buying time on Jones’s show. Few if any company executives of advertisers or their agencies would listen to Jones or take much notice of him. He delivers an audience of potentially cashed-up superannuants and other consumer demographics. The moment it became clear that any association with Jones would tarnish their valuable brands, the decision to terminate made itself. The social media campaign merely set bureaucratic processes going within companies. Letters and emails had to be responded to, and in formulating responses, attention had to be paid to what Jones actually said and says. It does not take long listening to Jones to realise how dissimilar he is to a decent human being.
@TerjeP
That is what is called politics. One hopefully considers carefully the worthiness of the claim and its feasibility in context, puts a position and takes responsibility for the consequences. That’s how we work things out. Some elements of “the public” will be offended. Others will be supportive. Those uncertain will have a chance to make up their minds. Everyone learns something out of the event.
Just doing nothing because some people will probably take umbrage is no way to advance the human condition, IMO. It is absolutely certain that some people will push back if you attack entrenched privilege, but that doesn’t make entrenched privilege virtuous. Those who act as if it does, or simply say “whatcha gonna do?” are merely mouthing the conservative credo.
Freelander, I used to think your comments were often amusing and sometimes insightful. But as time went by I found less in them that I found interesting. There were less things I could say that I agreed or disagreed with because I found it increasingly impossible to work out what you actually thought. From my point of view I guess there was less substance and more combativeness. Goodbye and take care.
@Ronald Brak
Indeed. That’s pretty much how I saw him.
TerjeP I know that Alan Jones didn’t write a letter of apology because
1. it would be in writing and bullies don’t like things in writing
2. If he had put it in writing having ignored Rule 1 then he would have had to mention it and he hasn’t mentioned it at all
3. He has no intention of apologising properly for his remarks because it was the PM’s fault that he made the error in the first place.
4. A person who buys a chaff bag jacket is the ultimate straw man. The apology was just a distraction.
It probably hasn’t helped Jones’ cause that Tony Abbott repeated the “died of shame” phrase this week in Parliament. The Jones debacle was starting to die off, and he and 2GB might have been able to limp away with not too much damage, but Abbott has given it new life.
More subtlely, Jones’ cause may be even further damaged by Abbott’s claim that he had “completely forgotten about [the quote], of course” after it was clear to Abbott that he’d FUBARed. This has added extra fuel to the saga’s fire. No-one with a quorum of brain cells would believe that Abbott could possibly be telling the truth when he says that he’d forgotten within a week about the quote that ignited the most significant political/media furor in many months, and his attempt to do so is notably cynical and quite puerile. Certainly John Alexander, the member for Benelong who sits two rows behind Abbott in the Lower House, noticed the significance of Abbotts words moments after they were spoken – have a look at the interval from 17:10 to 17:25 on the clip here and watch the expression on Alexander’s face.
And seriously, if Abbott really is so amnesiac then he is certainly not competent to govern a country…
The other dichotomy of standard here is the prolific protestation of the Chatham House Rule that was allegedly (and demonstrably not) in place at the dinner where ones gave that notorious speech. Apparently it’s not OK to repeat what was said in the presence of over a hundred people with significant current and future influence in the running of the country, but it’s entirely OK to publicise and act on a private series of text conversations between two consenting adults. As much as I abhor Peter Slipper’s comments to James Ashby, they really were made in private, just as surely many other disgraceful comments are made by many other parliamentarians in their own private spheres. I don’t think that it’s possible to react so vociferously about Slipper’s revolting comments on the one hand, and then claim that Jones’ disgusting disrespect was only a private matter that is no business of the public’s.
The Coalition leadership’s response to the Jones matter only goes to show that the conservative side of Australian politics is much more inclined to tap into and manipulate the shock-jock radio audience than it admits. And don’t both partners in the bed wriggle around when the pillow talk is broadcast to all and sundry. And the fact that it’s topped off with the lingerie of hypocrisy only makes all the more tawdry.
If the tangled mess that is this issue was made a little plainer to the average politically-disengaged Joe and Jane Citizen I suspect that some of them might actually be moved to boycott both the media and the political arms of the right-wing establisment in this country. Alas, there’s a huge chunk of the general public that sees no problem with any of it, and likely we’ll spend the next electoral period at least in a landscape more reminiscent of the Bjelke-Petersen era than of anything we’d expect from a 21st century nation.
…where Jones gave that notorious speech…
Jill – my understanding is that the chaff bag jacket was bought by others to mock Alan Jones in a jesting way. Rather than it being bought by him to further mock the PM.
@Bernard J.
Good to see you again Bernard J. I haven’t visited Deltoid in a fair while.
Your link above goes to this topic.
The broader point is that while Jones’s remarks were the proximal cause of the campaign, the distal causes include:
a) Alan Jones is a serial offender in the reckless abuse stakes up to an un-rescinded incitement to inter-communal violence
b) Alan Jones is a de facto adviser to the LotO
c) Alan Jones has a significant audience
d) Now there’s social media, which as Tim Dunlop over at The Drum makes clear, changes the game.
Has Jones apologised yet about the fact that he lied about the dinner organisers invoking the Chatham House Rule?
Thought not.
STAP and mates are dinosaurs and should be stuffed and mounted. Nothing wrong with that, this is Jones current status. The video of the Abbott smack down has already passed 300,000 hits. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/gillard-misogyny-rant-on-abbott-goes-viral/story-e6frf7kf-1226493038649
STAP SATP SPAT? Whatever
the ones who make money assembling “tha”polls have come face to face with an unfunded ,unsolicited trooly-rooly,honest-to-betsy Australia wide (wait for it)
poll.
Yes, Freelander is one of the reasons I stopped actively commenting here. What got me was not so much his pointless antagonisms and abusive manner; it was that he just didn’t make any sense. I found that the more comments of his there were in a thread, the less productive the discussion, and the less I enjoyed the overall post.
can you boycott something you never listened to in the first place?
Jones is not a joke in the political game. Howard cultivated Jones on a weekly basis because he gave access to an audience that must have included socially conservative swinging voters. Jones may have supported Bob Carr at one stage too, but later turned on him.
Jones’s listeners are nearly twice as likely as other Australians to vote for the Coalition.
see http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/the-world-versus-alan-jones/story-e6frezz0-1226489739757
Tony Abbott’s several uses of “shame” in Parliament today (or was it yesterday?) was obviously intended as a reference to Jones’ hate speech – one would have to be obtuse to think otherwise, so the PM was justified to call him out on it.
What puzzles me is whether he wanted to obliquely support Jones, or did he think that repeating the word would somehow devalue it, or disempower the outraged response to Jones’ use of it? In either case, I have to question his judgement – he seems incapable of controlling this sort of reflexive behavior.
If, as seems likely, sadly, he becomes PM next year, we are in for interesting times.
Jim,
What the hate media sells is not products to an audience. They sell their audience to their advertisers.
If sufficient numbers of people reject the platform (and make that known to the advertisers by way of boycotting), then obviously ‘yes’ you can boycott something you never listened to (or in the case of News Ltd – never read).
Now, if only we could get momentum to do the same to News Ltd….
Ron – perhaps Abbott was being tricky or perhaps he was just staying on message. He has been plugging the “dying of shame” line for over a year. Here is an article from 2011 citing it:-
http://www.smh.com.au/national/government-dying-of-shame-abbott-20110901-1jn4h.html
thanks megan, these boycotts sound like providing a public good through private action. hard to do
I thought it was a joke too TerjeP.
Interesting point that Alan Jones was channelling Tony Abbott but Tony Abbott should have known that parroting the phrase after a week of outrage by the community was always a bad idea and wouldn’t go unnoticed by other people despite his hurt denials.
“Never before have the tools existed for our opinion makers to really get a bead on the nation’s pulse. Never before have so few bothered to do so.”
http://www.theglobalmail.org/mobile/feature/old-media-lessons-in-missing-the-point/420/
Can I just say Jones is a terrible dresser who probably thinks he is a good dresser.
He was dressed appallingly in his press conference.
Weren’t his texts sent from his parliamentary phone (or whatever the correct term would be)? Does this mean that they should ever really be considered private?
I know that if I sent obscene or derogatory texts from my company phone I could fully expect to be sacked or worse for it. Shouldn’t those members of the public sector who are elected to represent us be held to the same, if not higher, standards as those in the private sector?
Not wading into the hypocrisy of this whole thing – both sides have come out looking pretty disgusting in my view – just questioning the notion that these texts should be considered truly private.
Is he off the air yet? Is it working?
@TerjeP The boycott is costing 2GB about $400K/week – an extraordinary result.
Bob Katter claims that those in the Jones boycott are “unAustralian” thereby introducing common Jones themes of racism and xenophobia.
In 1987 Andrew Peacock likened John Howard to a pudendum and was punished by being returned to the leadership of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party.
http://australianpolitics.com/1987/03/23/kennett-peacock-car-phone-conversation.html
Does Mr Slipper have leadership aspirations?
so we know the jones speech was leaked by a journalist present at the function, but is it known how slipper’s text messages became public domain? presumably, at least the following have access to the full record:- (1) slipper (2) ashby (3) their respective telco service providers (4) their respective legal service providers (5) the police (6) the court. did i miss anyone? is it known who leaked them? -a.v.
Impressive. As an aside I’d like to ask a question about how this process works and how me and some of my likeminded mates might exercise our consumer rights. There are sections of the ABC I object to. How do I hold them to account with one of these boycotts?
@alfred venison
My understanding is that they were tendered as evidence in Ashby’s sexual harassment case against Slipper. Since the case isn’t being conducted in camera, they entered the public domain as soon as they were discussed in court.
thank you, Tim Macknay. aha, so simple. -a.v.
Pr Q recommends:
I would not be too quick to write Jones off. There is an awfully big market out there for confrontational opinions. And, as I mentioned four years ago on the eve of Obama’s ascension, there is a fairly hefty “right-wing ballast” in political culture which tends to get overlooked by the Left in its periodically manic phases.
I am no fan of Alan Jones, he could be the eponymous model for the “Ballad of a Thin Man”* None the less I don’t think Dylan really wanted to see Mr Jones rail-roaded, purged or shut-down completely. He just wanted him to STFU when within earshot.
Jones is not a good advertisement for cultural conservatism, his nasty style negates whatever worthy substance. FWIW I lean towards the Tory anarchist style of cultural conservatism (Belloc, Chesterton, Orwell, Mencken. Waugh (A & E), Oakeshott, Conquest, Amis, Larkin, Dalrymple). You can accuse the Australian Right of many things but literary stylishness is not one of them.
None the less I don’t favour running Jones out of town by means of ad boycotts, petitions or regulations. I know there is no right to free speech in the constitution, but it is part of the “vibe” of our culture, and one I am quite fond of. Campaigns of this sort tend to chill free speech.
If you don’t like Jones then by all means criticise him or turn off. But there are plenty of people who do like his program and I don’t see any good reason to deprive them of their listening pleasure.
And the use of the phrases “hate speech” and “hate radio” should be retired. They basically boil down to “speech I strongly disagree with, uttered in an irritating tone of voice”. see the use of the term “fascism” anytime in the past 40 years.
There is plenty of pot-to-kettle hypocrisy in the stance taken by the Left on this subject. I am old enough to remember the Howard years when the PM was regularly compared to Hitler, Klu Klux Klan etc for putting forward policies that are now generally recognised as right and proper. This unseemly episode seems to have been flushed down a memory hole.
Meanwhile most of the crew at Crooked Timber were prepared to give Eric Hobsbawn, an unrepentant Bolshevik. a free pass despite his institutional connection and ideological commitment to the most sustained and ferocious apparatus of hate in human history. Apparently hate is not hateful if it is politically correct.
But its clear that Left-“liberals” scent blood in the water and are going in for the kill. I guess that whole classical liberal “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” deal is a dead letter.
Political justice is just another phrase for settling old scores.
[dirgy ballad set to honky-tonk, elements of lurching sea-shanty]
*
Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin’ around
You should be made
To wear earphones
Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
Am glad to see some of you joining my boycott of tabloid Zemanak-style “hate radio”, I must admit have refused this sort of rubbish for decades, except for the occasional listen to parliament.
Settle, Petal.
We lefties aren’t running Jones out of town. We’re simply asking his sponsors to stop paying him to do what he does.
If Jones really believed in free speech, be’d be prepared to say what he says for free. We’re simply giving Jones a chance to prove the sincerity of his convictions.
Katz @ #30 said:
Chill, dill.
Left-“liberals” are becoming veritable cold storage chillers for free speech, see the moral panics whipped up over James Watson and others who I am not permitted to mention [!]. All of whom were “run out of town”.
Why is there no campaign to rid the airwaves or subsidised venues of Catherine Deveny? Pro tempe she has said at least as many hateful things as Jones and yet her toxic drivel is given a free pass by the Left. (FWIW, I am happy to see her get as many gigs as she wants, let one hundred flowers bloom and all that.)
Its striking fact of the post-modern age that Left-wingers, despite an ostensible commitment to the profession of liberal intellectual, seem to be illiberal and anti-intellectual when they are scratched deep enough.
@Jack Strocchi
err no … Jones is not really exercising his “free speech”. He is speaking as the mouthpiece of business, (not because he likes them (though he plainly does) but at their express behest. It’s almost the opposite of free speech — it’s paid speech. The speech of corporations is not protected and they can, if they want, decide not to speak and pull the plug on him speaking on their behalf. Right now, Jones has one sponsor — MRN. If that sponsor withdraws, Jones will have to start exercising something like free speeech by, speaking, for the first time in about 25 years, on his own behalf and on his own dime.
A whole bunch of reasons. In no particular order:
a) She’s like someone’s mad uncle. She shoots her mouth off as the whim takes her. Her venting has a thread of sorts, but as she makes clear, she speaks for nobody but herself.
b) She has no influence over any significant political body or institution in the country
c) Hardly anyone listens to her on a regular basis. That handful of us who do typically shake our heads in disbelief.
d) She has never called for intercommunal violence based on one section of the community being subhuman; she never said half the community were “destroying the joint”; she never called for death of the Prime Minister, a minor party leader and a Mayor. She never lied about her sponsors; She never incited violence against journalists at a public rally
e) She is not being paid for her opinion and there’s nothing about her to boycott.
As Katz notes, free speech and free publication are not at all the same things. If Jones wants to say something on his own dime, as far as I am concerned, he can go ahead. Nobody should prevent him. But if he is speaking in part on my dime, i.e on my behalf, I’d sooner he keep his ugly trap shut.
I disagree with reactionaries so I don’t donate to them. That’s not illiberal — it’s just simple good sense.
Catherine Deveny seems rather good at undoing her own career. Little of what she says is funny or witty. There is a difference between wit and being nasty.
Billy Connolly is a brilliant example of wit with a vulgar element. Would like to see him live but the tickets sell-out before you know he is coming.
Golly, Jack. How on earth does opposition to the mendacious, vicious tripe peddled by Alan Jones become ‘anti-intellectual’? Jones regularly defames intellectuals, from scientists to philosophers, attributing base motives for anything they find or say that don’t suit his narrow range of views. Surely it is entirely proper for consumers to let firms that advertise with Jones know that by doing so their brands are depreciated; that we as consumers are less likely to buy products made by firms that support him by so advertising? Where is the illiberalism in that? If a brand you normally patronise were associated with Deveny, might you not let them know your views on the subject? Wouldn’t you want to help them keep your custom?
BTW, I do object to Deveny being identified as some sort of icon of the left. God help us all if that is the standard by which we are to be judged.
Strocchers, Pavlov’s salivating dog, drools a response learned long ago on the leash of Frank Knopfelmacher.
Clearly, he didn’t read my earlier comment that the current campaign against Jones is an adaptation of American opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act.
This resistance prefigured the Boston Tea Party, famously much beloved of many present day adherents of the GOP.
These folks would take deep umbrage at having their tactics denigrated as “left-liberal”.
Heel, Strocchers. Heel!
Katz @ #44 blustered indignantly:
Excuse me for my egregious oversight.
Let me get this straight: You are saying that Tthe campaign against Jones is analogous to a revolutionary movement against imperialism? Man, have you gone off your medication again?
The campaign against Jones is simply a case of settling old political scores. Been happening since Cain knocked Abel.
Keep it simple, stupid.
Strocchers, do you understand the distinction between means and ends?
Your latest “contribution” suggests otherwise.
Is he off the air yet?
Not the point Terje,
He is clearly losing money for the station at present
Well money is all these people care about so he will be off the air by Monday then. Surely. How long can it take?