Celebrating Talkback

There is no doubt that talkback radio is an important barometer of public opinion in Australia. But at what point does talkback move from vehicle of free speech to mouthpiece for the inflammatory and discriminative? Scott Richardson muses on the question as talkback turns 40.

This month is the 40 year anniversary of talkback radio in Australia. It was April 1967 when Mike Walsh began his program 2-Way Radio on 2SM.

Revolutionary as it was at the time, talkback is now entrenched in Australian broadcasting. According to Commercial Radio Australia over 50 commercial stations in Australia run talkback shows with one in four Australians tuning in.

However with the controversies in recent years over shock jocks such as Alan Jones, is talkback really a bastion of free speech as the shock jocks claim? Or is it just a weapon for petty grievances and prejudice?

Talkback hosts will tell you free speech is the name of the game. John Laws himself has said that talkback is “a way of really keeping in touch with Australia.”

Indeed, when John Howard went on Charles Woolley’s Across Australia, Terry Hicks rang in and put his questions directly to the Prime Minister who agreed to talk to him on air. “I never refused to take a call from anybody,” the PM said.

Mark Day’s blog on The Australian news website put it well: “Talkback is a worthy and legitimate tool for news-oriented radio. Used to seek out expert opinion or to hear politicians’ justifications for the decisions that affect our communities, or as a way of informing people about what’s happening in their back yards, it is invaluable.

“Used as a method of generating cheap programming - a pot-stirring host inciting his listeners and inviting them to come on air to rant in response - it sinks instantly into a world of the trite and the trivial.”

There is always plenty of colour in talkback of course. Stan Zemanek has called Germaine Greer “a grub, a bitch, a bitter and twisted old tart.” Jones described the men that bashed the Cronulla life savers as “Middle Eastern thugs.”

So what is the alternative? Have the Australian Communications and Media Authority determined for us what can and cannot be broadcast or printed as it did with their Alan Jones ruling?

When there have been incursions of free speech such as the blocking of a site parodying the Prime Minister or the serving of writs by logging company Gunns there are (rightly) many jumping up and down.

But when people like Jones gets similar treatment, who wants to defend what seems to be the indefensible?

The answer is simple – you don’t have to. The point is their right to say it even if what they say is arguably ignorant, uninformed or downright racist and inflammatory.

We need to take heed of Voltaire’s famous adage, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”