The Jones boy

Observations on Alan Jones ... Artemus Jones (no relation) on the shoddy quality of public discourse ... Blame social media, where everyone is a publisher and can let fly with half-baked comments ... Free speech quandry 

Jones: outpourings fit a familiar pattern

ALAN Jones' insensitive remarks about Julia Gillard and her father's death have understandably generated a great deal of media commentary this week. 

Most of the media coverage has been predictable.

Left-leaning critics of Jones have expressed moral outrage and called for his sacking.

Conservatives have condemned his critics as destroyers of free speech. Some have even cast Jones as a victim.

There has also been a political overlay: Labor politicians have sought to fix Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party with responsibility for Jones' comments, whilst Liberal politicians have accused Labor of vilifying Abbott because of his connection to Jones. 

Jones' outburst is not an isolated event.

In recent times a number of high profile media personalities, including Kyle Sandilands, Catherine Deveny, Glenn Milne, Mike Smith and John Mangos have overstepped an invisible and moveable line. 

We are immersed in a new culture of public debate that operates in an inflexible fashion. 

To borrow a phrase from US Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas in the 1990s, one might say that public debate has descended into a form of "high-tech lynching".

The characteristics of this new paradigm of public discourse are as follows:

1. A high profile personality makes comments that are offensive or otherwise controversial. As the Jones' case shows, it does not matters  whether the comments are made in public or in private.
2. There is immediate criticism of the speaker in the media for breaching the cannons of political correctness. The comments are usually deemed to be "racist" or "sexist", such terms being so widely defined that they are devoid of meaning and can encompass almost any assertion. (John Mangos was sacked for "racism" for pointing out that a suspected criminal appeared to be Chinese.) 
3. There is an outpouring of moral indignation and vituperation on social media platforms from people with little or no genuine connection to the original comments. These outpourings are disproportionate to the original comments and often exceed them in offensiveness.
4. Social media campaigns calling for the sacking of the transgressor and boycotts by advertisers are commenced. The aim is the economic destruction of the celebrity and/or his employer, a punishment more severe than any offence caused by the original comments. There is a disturbing aspect of vicarious vengefulness in all of this. (Julia Gillard was hurt and offended by Jones' remarks, but can it seriously be suggested that the 100,000 or so signatories to an on-line petition calling for Jones' sacking were hurt in the same way?)
5. The transgressor must issue an apology, no matter how insincere or qualified.
6. There are calls for an enquiry and/or the imposition of further restrictions on free speech. 
7. The transgressor is either sacked or opts for a period of gardening leave until the furore blows over. Their fate depends upon the degree of support provided by their employer. Milne, Mangos, Deveny and Smith were cast adrift by their employers. Jones and Sandilands have been supported by their bosses.
8. After a decent lapse of time the matter is, for the most part, forgotten. 
9. The so-called public debate results in no tangible change at all, save pehaps for the destruction of the transgressor.

All in all this is an unedifying spectacle. Yet, seemingly, it is the only way in which contemporary public debate proceeds.

The transgressors and their media employers have implicitly accepted the legitimacy of this debauched paradigm.

Needless to say, such a paradigm can only lead to a further decline in the quality of public debate and a further coarsening of public consciousness.

A number of explanations for this state of affairs can be identified. 

• The decline in journalistic standards within mainstream media organisations over recent years. 
• Technological innovations - including the internet and social media - which operate in a value-free zone and beyond effective legal sanction. 
• The creation - again, through technology - of alternative realities in which ideologies are personalised and operate in a subjective and emotionally charged fashion. 
• The intrusion into the realm of public debate of the non-expert and the ill-informed.  
• Behind the facade of economic growth and prosperity, the development of a reservoir of gross cultural dissatisfaction that manifests itself through social media in the form of hatred of individuals who have achieved a degree of fame or success. 

Is the contemporary culture of public debate reversable?

Perhaps not. Such is the power and ubiquity of digital communication that the vast majority of participants in the Jones' "debate" will see nothing wrong with the way it has proceeded.

For the most part, they will probably be unable to conceive of any other mode of public debate. 

Governments and media organisations must bear much of the blame for this state of affairs.

Both have cravenly capitulated in the face of the demonstrably undesirable cultural consequences of technological change. 

I'm not saying that Jones should not be penalised for his comments. He should be, but only to the extent the law permits and within a cultural framework different from the one that is dealing with him at the moment. 

Jones will survive because of his commercial power.

The real issue is whether a sordid and debauched culture that panders to the lowest common denominator should be permitted to continue to govern the realm of public discussion.

That is what politicians and media organisations should be focussing on.

Artemus Jones