“Is that a dead parrot?” asked Crikey in the subject line of yesterday’s edition, bringing back a flood of memories about the important contribution Alan Jones has made to our little e-zine over the past 20 years.
Long time media watchers still fondly talk about the regular Parrot Droppings columns which ran from 2002 until 2004 in Crikey and chronicled the shock jock’s performances in the period after he’d survived the cash for comment scandals, saw his beloved 2UE radio station bought by the southerners who owned 3AW for $90 million, and then famously defected to Singo and 2GB in March 2002.
I’ve never met or had any direct engagement with Jones, but for some reason he told Channel Nine reporter Adam Shand in 2004: “People like Stephen Mayne don’t deserve a place in society.”
What was the crime? Well he was probably upset about almost 50 Parrot Droppings columns put together by a team of Sydney media watchers spanning the likes of gossip columnists, former political staffers, ABC employees and cartoonists.
Here are links to some of the bird watching team’s more noteworthy efforts:
May 26, 2002:
Parrot Droppings: Brogden, Carr, Costa and other inconsistent squawks
July 21, 2002:
Parrot Droppings: Squawks for Seed, Qantas and airport attacks on Nicholas Moore
November 26, 2002:
Parrot Droppings: Devoted caller Stephanie and all those complaints against Mike Carlton
December 1, 2002:
Parrot Droppings: why is everyone watching the Parrot as his power broadens?
October 28, 2002:
Parrot Droppings: how did he get away with those grubby cash for comment deals?
April 25, 2004:
Parrot Droppings: backing an Adelaide murderer and harassing Carmel Tebbutt
April 29, 2004:
Parrot Droppings: Jones, Laws, Flint, Fordham and the great Sydney media punch up
Jones was probably also annoyed about a few of the early board tilts I did in 2000 and 2001 because a number of them targeted his cash for comment sponsors.
Here was a systemic accountability failure if ever you’d seen one.
ABC TV’s Media Watch scored the Gold Walkley in 1999 for its exposé on John Laws and his tawdry cash for comment deals with the Australian Bankers’ Association.
A flurry of media ensued and even Jones supporter John Howard felt the need to commission an Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) inquiry into cash for comment in late 1999.
Julian Burnside QC, a Melbourne silk independent of the Sydney power set, was retained as counsel assisting the inquiry and duly carved up Jones and Laws, leading to several adverse findings against them.
But the accountability system failed because Howard appeared on Jones’ program the day after the adverse findings were released, and 2UE’s management did nothing to punish him other than requiring a register of sponsors to be published on the station’s website.
Key Jones sponsors included Qantas, Optus, Commonwealth Bank, NRMA and the Sydney billionaire developer Lang Walker, and some were still paying him even after the ABA inquiry. So the decision was taken to target as many of these companies with board tilts opposing the cash for comment deals and promising to run for their board every year until they stopped.
It didn’t take long for most of the sponsors to walk away, although some were probably intending not to renew their arrangements at the end of the contract anyway.
But costing Jones hundreds of thousands of dollars and then publishing regular columns taking the mickey out of him probably explains the undeserving position in society line.
The other important Jones role in the history of Crikey was that his defection to 2GB created a vacancy on the 2UE breakfast show. Its new owner, Southern Cross Broadcasting, parachuted in 3AW shock jock Steve Price from Melbourne to fill the void.
The timing was perfect for us because a multi-day defamation battle with Price was all set to start in the Victorian Supreme Court just as he was meant to be in Sydney filling the biggest shoes in Australian radio. He couldn’t be in two places at once.
So when our pro bono lawyer Burnside (who else?) offered Price’s bosses $50,000 to settle the case, it was quickly agreed and Crikey never looked back.
Fast forward 17 years and there was Steve Price on Andrew Bolt’s Sky show last night singing the Parrot’s praise, in stark contrast to what he was saying shortly before he headed to Sydney only to be humiliated when a clear majority of the Parrot’s audience followed him across to 2GB and ratings on the 2UE breakfast show crashed from as high 20 down to single digits.
The other amusing connection with all this was that the Price defamation case against Crikey happened only because I republished a press release put out by a failed political candidate called Raymond Hoser which, at the very bottom, falsely claimed that Price had been found guilty before the cash for comment inquiry after a complaint by Hoser.
Shortly before the key mediation session with Price and his lawyers, Crikey had published a foul-mouthed blooper tape of Alan Jones sounding off. The same legal team acting for Price had fired off a letter demanding that we take it down for breaching 2UE’s copyright.
So we took it down, but when the mediation failed and Price’s lawyers made it very clear they were intending to bankrupt me and seize our home, I walked straight back to said home and republished the Jones blooper tape as leverage in the ongoing legal war.
This was quickly republished by then Triple J Mornings presenter Francis Leach. I can’t find the original but it included some of the content which was subsequently packaged up by Triple J’s Hack program in 2012.
Have a listen. It will remind you why it is a very good thing that the nasty Parrot’s radio career will be over by the end of this month.
So confused about Alan Jones…just how exactly did he last as long as he did?? Keep fighting the good fight, Stephen Mayne!
The thing with Alan Jones he has incredible amounts of power, I used to live near the 2UE building & did deliveries to them, most days of the week, unfortunately from the top down he had them all in thrall, even in passing conversation with those that worked there it was the Alan Jones show..
People from other states don’t realise that someone like Jones can exist in the real world, but he has & has done so for an extraordinary amount of time, because people have tolerated who he is & how he operates..
He has wielded this power to keep himself in the spotlight & in control as long as possible, the powers that be that paid him, that called it “talkback radio” it seems lost sight of what the aim of it was for many years ago..
There were a number of times when getting into Sydney cabs, (it seemed that it was mandatory that they all have whatever shock jock ranting on their radios, at whatever time of day) where I’ve had to make it clear to the driver that I’d prefer the radio channel to be changed or switched off as they all seem to have a preference for either, Jones, Stan Zemanek, or John Laws, which in my view was & still is too many angry, rich white men who were/are going to ruin my day with their insidious vile nonsense ..
Getting back to your observation Nicola, Jones I suspect knows where all body’s are buried, (so to speak) I would imagine he has a lot of dirt on people who are either celebrities powerful & or well connected, but aren’t should we say as shiny & well behaved or as squeaky clean as their publicity people would like them to be seen as..
He’s probably done many a deal, like an iceberg there’s probably 10% on the surface, the rest is hidden underneath..
Some may call it blackmail, but he would be most likely to have kept his position at the top of the pile, because of all the above & maybe more..
With Joneses need to bully people or chastise them into keeping quiet so that he gets to stay or go at a time of his own choosing..
I also would suggest the world has changed a lot for the likes of Jones & those of his ilk, as it’s clear ratings & the legal ramifications are getting far too challenging & of course expensive considering the last round that they lost..
Yes medically he may be becoming compromised, but I would suspect it’s far too costly legally & also the advertising revenue just isn’t there anymore to justify keeping him in his slot..
Hello Nichola,
You ask a really good question here. I am no psychologist but your question has crossed my mind a number of times. I suspect that some people have an almost uncanny ability to come across as an all knowing source of information and with the capability to ‘get things done’. The best equivalents to Jones that I recognize are from two different time periods yet show amazing similarities to each other. From the past I draw upon Adolf Hitler and the present Donald Trump. Jones is right at home in such company.
These person’s project an almost hypnotic sense of all knowing and that their view of how things should be is unquestionable the correct one. They manage to sell their almost god like qualities to those who for whatever reason are looking to a god like being. This unthinking adulation permits these god -like creatures to be in error yet still retain their core supporter base. However, they also possess the tools and undeserved power (mainly access to mass media) to impose their message and belittle.bully and defame their opposition.
At the base level all these people need to have enormous egos and almost a self-belief in their moral superiority over the rest of us lesser beings. And for whatever reason some people buy this. The worst thing that can happen to these god-like creatures is to be challenged by mere mortals, such as Crikey and its then editor. One thing bully boys fear the most are those who will not be bullied. Scott Morrison shows touches of this, notice how Morrison hates to be called to account for his actions. Regarding the Sport Rorts affair the thing that must most grate with Morrison is not that he was caught red-handed but that he is being called to account for his actions. In his mind he still probably thinks that he did no wrong but is pi…ed off that he is being made to account for actions he most likely does not consider all that serious by those he consider inferiors.
Don’t forget Hitler’s ‘golden rule; “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” The bully boys have not forgotten it.
I think that you’ll find that it was not the Fuhrer – “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Joseph Goebbels.
He added an extra wrinkle – “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
I fondly recall Parrot Droppings and the similar compilations on the Blot, Poison Pen which were published back when Crikey had the courage and fearlessness essential for a progressive publication.
Ah, thems was the days, no more.
Stephen, I cancelled my Crikey subscription while you were in the chair exactly because of the attitude you’re displaying in this article: unexamined, self-righteous antipathy does not well serve the public interest.
You wouldn’t be the only commentator for whom that’s true. Mr Jones thrived on his self-righteous antipathy, and there are many others. But sad as it is ironic, the kind of writing above sits well in their company, as no good journalism should.
Opinions are fine, but when comes time to report facts, good journalism asks wise questions first. Hate leads to ignorant questions, and glorying in hate flatters self-satisfied ignorance in your audience (which is precisely why populist leaders exploit it so readily.)
I believe Crikey has benefited from your absence from the chair: it has gotten broader and smarter, with more actionable relevance. But your own journalism has improved too by focusing on fact-based topics like board integrity and shareholder advocacy, where your inability to curb personal antipathies is not the professional disability it once was.
You need to stay with that, Stephen, and avoid these Mary Sue articles in which recounting Crikey’s halcyon, dung-slinging days becomes synonymous with trumpeting your own unexamined self-satisfaction.
When I was with a large financial services provider the CEO was attacked by Jones for no apparent reason, research found Jones was very conflicted providing a type of financial advice to his “battlers” yet the products he was spruiking were found to be unethical and unlawful, yet the financial media ignored all this and reported on his unproven attacks on the CEO. I could never understand why people would not stand up to him.
Look, i’m not immune to stupidity, but for the life of me, I truly don’t understand the how, what or why, of his power & influence. Was it the Footy ?
So another tapeworm joins the Sky News after dark bucket of worms. No wonder friendlyjordies has a larger following than Sky News crap.