Alan Jones gets more headlines than PM

Comment from Wayne Stamm

This morning there were three separate stories in the SMH featuring Alan Jones.

Does this mean the influence of the media is now far outweighing its responsibilities as a commentator on life, and instead getting lost in inconsequentialities?
 
Worse still, is the listening, viewing and reading public allowing it to happen?

The influence of Alan Jones in the Opera House dispute, followed by the intervention of the NSW Premier to give the go ahead for advertising on the Heritage listed building, once again shows the power of a big microphone.
 
That the PM has suggested the Opera House critics have a “lie down” underlines the influence of Jones.
 
The veteran broadcaster is getting more coverage in the Sydney papers than the PM today as the public is being whipped into a frenzy about an oversized slide show.
 
It certainly makes a change from daily conjecture about the leadership of either political party that is accompanied by weekly opinion poles on who is the most preferred candidate.
 
A month ago the media was convinced Kyle Sandilands was having a dummy spit about Survey 5, and yesterday President Trump got extensive coverage for toilet paper on his shoe, and both of these were treated as if they were the biggest things in our daily lives.
 
So, is radio in particular getting lost in trivialities? Do we really need to know the $US value of our own currency every hour, or if the stock market is edging up or down by minimal amounts?
 
Are we becoming so vacuous that we really care about the lifestyles of the rich and infamous, the gossip about artists and the inane interviews that so often crash across our airwaves?
 
Apparently the answer is “yes”, especially if you look at the numbers listening to radio, though for some there is the lament about “what happened to good old entertaining local radio”.


   Wayne Stamm

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