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Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, January fourteen, twenty twenty six. A split is

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Speaker 1: emerging in the federal opposition to the Albanese government's post

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Speaker 1: Bondai massacre law reforms, with liberals to support measures to

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Speaker 1: crack down on hate speech and gun ownership, and some

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Speaker 1: nationals likely to oppose. Complicating things further Susan Lee's leadership

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Speaker 1: rival Andrew Hasty, is saying he can't vote for a

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Speaker 1: law that limits religious freedom. Kevin Rudd has suddenly quit

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Speaker 1: as Australia's ambassador to the United States, months after surviving

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Speaker 1: calls for his sacking and a public dressing down from

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Rudd is quitting to work for a think tank.

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Speaker 1: Foreign editor Greg Sheridan reckons Rudd was the only senior

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Speaker 1: government figure to be hardheaded about China, and his departure

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Speaker 1: leaves the quote marshmallow brains in charge. Those stories are

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Speaker 1: live now at the Australian dot com dot. The trial

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Speaker 1: of former broadcaster Alan Jones is already shaping up to

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Speaker 1: be the trial of the year, with Jones bleeding not

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Speaker 1: guilty to scores of charges of indecent assault. Today The

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Speaker 1: Australian's Media Diary editor Steve Jackson joins me to look

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Speaker 1: at how the prosecution is framing its case, the stakes

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Speaker 1: for Jones, and how old fashioned media like radio are

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Speaker 1: handling this post shock jock era.

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Speaker 2: Alan Jones, once one of the most influential media identities

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Speaker 2: in Australia, is now under arrest over allegations he and

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Speaker 2: decently hassaulted multiple young men.

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Speaker 1: Police executed a warrant at the eighty three year old's

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Speaker 1: luxury Sydney apartment at Circular Key this morning. Steve Jackson

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Speaker 1: edits The Australian's Media Diary. Steve, you've written a little

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Speaker 1: bit in twenty twenty five about Alan Jones, probably the

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Speaker 1: most famous radio broadcaster Australia ever produced. For most of

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Speaker 1: his career, someone who politicians feared, who audiences loved and loathed,

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Speaker 1: probably in equal measure. He was always controversial and in

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Speaker 1: the past couple of years, Alan Jones' worst nightmare has

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Speaker 1: come true. He has been charged with quite serious sexual offending.

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Speaker 1: Now in twenty twenty six he's going to face trial.

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Speaker 1: Where are those charges at and what are you expecting

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Speaker 1: in the next month?

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Speaker 3: You're right, Claire.

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Speaker 4: Alan Jones is someone who's been at the center of

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Speaker 4: the media landscape for decades in Australia, back to nineteen

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Speaker 4: eighty five when he first got his premier hitout on

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Speaker 4: two UI in Sydney. This year, he's going to be

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Speaker 4: at the center of the media spotlight for all the

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Speaker 4: wrong reasons. So he's currently facing twenty seven charges, twenty

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Speaker 4: five of those for indecent assault relating to nine victims

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Speaker 4: over the past two decades, and two more of unwanted

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Speaker 4: sexual touching.

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Speaker 3: What we're going to hear.

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Speaker 4: From May is the preliminary legal arguments around that case,

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Speaker 4: all of the allegations he currently denies, and then set down.

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Speaker 4: From August three, it's going to begin in proper what's

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Speaker 4: happened currently. He's had some of the more serious charges

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Speaker 4: dropped against him. They're the ones of aggravated sexual assault.

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Speaker 4: So it's going to be heard in the local court

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Speaker 4: for a magistrate instead of going up to the district court.

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Speaker 4: But it's still really serious. There's one hundred and thirty

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Speaker 4: nine potential witnesses going to be called and at this

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Speaker 4: stage the expectation is this is something that's going to

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Speaker 4: drag on in the courts for four months.

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Speaker 3: This is going to be the media story of the year.

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Speaker 1: We've both covered matters in the local court that have

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Speaker 1: massive significance. Often, even though the local court is where

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Speaker 1: traffic offenses get heard, it's also where serious criminals alleged

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Speaker 1: appear for their first appearances. So if someone's arrested on

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Speaker 1: a terror charge, they might have their first appearance before

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Speaker 1: a magistrate at the local court if it's on a weekend.

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Speaker 1: Local courts, though, generally just handle those small matters. If

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Speaker 1: a trial requires a jury, or if it's about a

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Speaker 1: serious offense like rape or murder, it is heard in

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Speaker 1: either the district or the Supreme Court. Big court rooms,

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Speaker 1: big jury boxes, lots of seats for the media. How

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Speaker 1: is the local court in you south, Well, he's going

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Speaker 1: to handle.

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Speaker 4: This, well, you're right, And in terms of punishment, obviously

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Speaker 4: it's at a lower level. What we're going to see

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Speaker 4: is people are going to be vying for spots in

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Speaker 4: that press gallery every day.

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Speaker 3: Not everyone's going to be able to get in.

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Speaker 4: We might potentially see it relaid, as we know from

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Speaker 4: COVID via video link, so that everyone who has an

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Speaker 4: interest in it does have an opportunity because we have

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Speaker 4: an open judicial system here in open justice system has

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Speaker 4: an opportunity to follow the case because there is going

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Speaker 4: to be massive interest in it. Now it is being

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Speaker 4: heard in the local court. Because prosecutors are being very

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Speaker 4: careful with this case. They know how important it is.

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Speaker 4: They know this scrutiny that's going to be involved and

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Speaker 4: important not just for the prosecutors and the alleged victims,

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Speaker 4: but also for Alan Jones under our legal framework, for

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Speaker 4: him to have a fair go at contesting these and

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Speaker 4: proving that he's not guilty, because he's insisting he's not.

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Speaker 4: So they've been ultra careful. So the more contentious charges,

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Speaker 4: the ones that are more difficult to prove, the aggravated

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Speaker 4: sexual assault, they have been dropped and they're going with

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Speaker 4: what they think is the safest route to trying to

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Speaker 4: get a conviction against him. That doesn't mean that the

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Speaker 4: complainants who accused mister Jones of aggravated sexual assault have

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Speaker 4: dropped out.

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Speaker 3: That is not the case.

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Speaker 4: My sources say they are most definitely going to be

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Speaker 4: proceeding with giving evidence against mister Jones, but just those

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Speaker 4: more difficult higher end of the spectrum charges have been

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Speaker 4: dropped so that they have the safest, strongest case possible

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Speaker 4: against mister Jones. And that said, mister Jones's adamant that

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Speaker 4: he's going to fight all those and he believes that

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Speaker 4: he is not guilty and can win.

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Speaker 1: In a few of our episodes of The Front in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five about this story, I've gone back and

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Speaker 1: listened to Alan Jones's old broadcasts and news stories about

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Speaker 1: things that he'd said, various controversies he had been involved

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Speaker 1: in over the years. He was such a huge figure

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Speaker 1: in Australian life and he was able to get politicians

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Speaker 1: into the studio and flay them, Julia Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull.

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Speaker 1: He was ruthless and it made for great radio. That's

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Speaker 1: why audiences loved him.

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Speaker 5: The woman's off her tree and quite frankly they should

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Speaker 5: shove her and Bob Brown and a. I just wonder

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Speaker 5: whether Scott Morrison's going to be fully brief to shove

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Speaker 5: a sock down the throat.

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Speaker 3: I mean, she is a joke, this woman.

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Speaker 5: You're dope, clover.

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Speaker 1: Or you died in the word dope.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 6: I hope Scott Morrison gets tough here with a few

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Speaker 6: backhands hasn't got a clue this woman.

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Speaker 1: But the disappearance of Alan Jones from the airwaves, which

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Speaker 1: has been prompted by these charges, I'm sure he would

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Speaker 1: have kept going forever if he could on one platform

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Speaker 1: or another. How has that left the radio landscape was actually.

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Speaker 4: Very interesting and a lot of it comes back to

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Speaker 4: the rise of the Internet. So we could see even

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Speaker 4: last month with the BONDEI terror attacks, the number of

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Speaker 4: people who are turning to radio as their priman U source,

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Speaker 4: which would have once been where you went to you know,

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Speaker 4: there's a terror attack. It's massive, it's happening in Sydney.

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Speaker 4: Got to tune into two GB, got to switch on

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Speaker 4: Channel nine. Those audiences no longer gravitate towards radio or television.

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Speaker 4: We know, and I've reviewed the minute by minutes of

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Speaker 4: the television coverage and the radio coverage and newspaper coverage,

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Speaker 4: and we know that people are now going to The

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Speaker 4: Australian or news dot com, dot you or any other

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Speaker 4: number of news sites for their rolling news coverage. There

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Speaker 4: were two hundred thousand people tuning into Channel nine on

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Speaker 4: that night of those attacks, and then we know news dot.

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Speaker 3: Com, dot you had an audience that surpassed that.

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Speaker 4: So what's happened in the past few years since mister

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Speaker 4: Jones was at the peak of these powers is we've

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Speaker 4: seen an eroding of the importance of live radio because

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Speaker 4: that is now being covered by digital news sites.

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Speaker 1: Part of that, too, is that everybody wants to see

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Speaker 1: the video, right and now that we all have a

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Speaker 1: fantastic camera in our hands, we can shoot video of

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Speaker 1: something that's happening in front of us and share it

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Speaker 1: and you need to be able to see that to

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Speaker 1: understand this story for example.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well exactly.

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Speaker 4: And we see more and more that mastheads provide an

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Speaker 4: all encompassing user experience. So videos online, there are people talking,

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Speaker 4: doing television and style reports online, there's audio of people

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Speaker 4: making phone calls, there's graphics. So what we're seeing is

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Speaker 4: all this is now being provided in one sort of

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Speaker 4: news source and it's easier, and people can scroll through

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Speaker 4: their phones and they can see in their social media

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Speaker 4: feeds the bits of coverage coming from different outlets.

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Speaker 3: So that power of.

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Speaker 4: Live radio, it's really really dissipated since mister Jones was there,

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Speaker 4: and it just doesn't exist anymore. Yes, at major news events,

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Speaker 4: they still have peak audiences, but we've seen a massive

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Speaker 4: eroding of that. So if mister Jones was still on

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Speaker 4: air to this date, the powers that he once had

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Speaker 4: would already be diminished. There are still politicians that think

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Speaker 4: it's important to go there, but we also know that,

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Speaker 4: like advertised, as we know, they have a very specific demographic,

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Speaker 4: and it's usually an older demographic. It's rusted on demographic

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Speaker 4: that has always voted liberal, always voted labor. They're swinging

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Speaker 4: voters and the ones people are trying to get they're

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Speaker 4: not gravitating towards talk back anymore. That is an outdated

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Speaker 4: medium for younger audiences.

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Speaker 1: AM radio, where Jones and Pivolet John Lawes once held

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Speaker 1: sway Ray Hadley, seems to now be accelerating to the

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Speaker 1: pace of change over that we've often seen in FM radio.

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Speaker 1: So they have a wacky duo of you know, Jacko

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Speaker 1: and Claire hosting the morning show. Then they dumped them

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Speaker 1: after six months if it's not working. That pace now

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Speaker 1: seems to be happening in AM where you don't have

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Speaker 1: characters who you can expect are going to be on

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Speaker 1: air for the next thirty years.

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Speaker 4: These radio networks, they're not making the big Bucks that

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Speaker 4: they once were. We see nine Radio, the biggest national

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Speaker 4: talkback network in the country. It's got outlets in Sydney, Melbourne,

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Speaker 4: Brisbane and Perth. Adelaide's overlooked, but like always Adelaides overlooked,

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Speaker 4: but we're seeing that that's a company now that makes

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Speaker 4: an inventor of eight million dollars and so the money's

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Speaker 4: just not there.

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Speaker 3: They're not investing in big stars. They've got a couple.

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Speaker 4: They've got the guys in Melbourne at Th for our

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Speaker 4: w Breakfast and Morning, and in two GB you know,

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Speaker 4: Ben Fordham still on Big Bucks for Hadley's replacement, Mark

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Speaker 4: Levy not on the same crazy sorts of money. And

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Speaker 4: in Bridge and Perth it's more like we need someone

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Speaker 4: who's that guy standing in the corner.

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Speaker 3: Yep, you're good enough, You're on.

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Speaker 4: Because they don't have the money to invest in big

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Speaker 4: name stars, and internally, that's what they're saying, is that

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Speaker 4: it's no longer about big name stars on Big Bucks.

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Speaker 4: They're just trying to reduce their costs and unfortunately those

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Speaker 4: names they're now trying to gravitate towards television. But they

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Speaker 4: don't even have the same amount of money because we're

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Speaker 4: seeing in TV news anchors, they're also copying pay cuts.

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Speaker 4: So it's just not that big force of personality anymore.

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Speaker 1: That accelerates the decline, doesn't it If you don't have

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Speaker 1: big personalities and it is just the guy in the corner,

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Speaker 1: and then next week it's me and then I get

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Speaker 1: dumb to next week it's you that's going to compound

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Speaker 1: those issues, isn't it decline? Is this the end of right?

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Speaker 4: Yea, well, and it's really self feeling, right because, as

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Speaker 4: you say, Claire, particularly with someone like Alan Jones or Ray,

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Speaker 4: love them, hate them, but care right. So I think

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Speaker 4: for everyone who used to tune in to listen to

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Speaker 4: mister Jones, for example, for every person that you and

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Speaker 4: him because they loved him, probably two people were tuning

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Speaker 4: in because they hated him and wanted to rail and

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Speaker 4: get Oh you know, I really disagree, and but people

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Speaker 4: cared what they're saying. Now, do you want to tune

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Speaker 4: in someone don't even know who they are? Don't really

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Speaker 4: why do I care about their opinion? So it's that

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Speaker 4: old expression in the media, you're only as good as

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Speaker 4: your last story that is gone.

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Speaker 3: You're only as good as your next story.

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Speaker 4: So unless you keep delivering and that you have a

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Speaker 4: great show every day, those audiences, they'll just wander off

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Speaker 4: somewhere else to someone who does have a great exclusive

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Speaker 4: every day. So that's the pressure on them to retain

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Speaker 4: the audiences. And it is getting tougher, right because newspapers

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Speaker 4: used to come out once a day and it was great.

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Speaker 4: You read the newspaper in the morning and I know

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Speaker 4: everything for the day because I know I've read everything

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Speaker 4: in there. You can't keep on top of it anymore

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Speaker 4: because every minute there's a new story online and it's immediate.

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Speaker 4: So that one power that they had being the fastest

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Speaker 4: medium to get live and to get to audiences. Now

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Speaker 4: everyone's in that same market.

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Speaker 1: Coming up.

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Speaker 5: The bank robber, the Hell Helicopter, and the future of radio.

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Speaker 1: I remember when there was a helicopter landed in a

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Speaker 1: prison yard and took a prisoner away. It was the

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Speaker 1: famous Australian bank robber, I think, and his girlfriend hijacked

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Speaker 1: to helicopter, flew into the prison yard and took him away.

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Speaker 5: This is a very daring, almost Hollywood style escape.

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Speaker 6: Police say thirty year old Lucy Dudco charted a helicopter

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Speaker 6: for what was supposed to be a joy flight over

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Speaker 6: the Homebush Olympic site. She then asked for a closer

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Speaker 6: look at nearby silver Water Jail.

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Speaker 7: Silver Water Jail in nineteen ninety nine, when he's then

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Speaker 7: a girlfriend hijacked to helicopter pilot at gunpoint and forced

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Speaker 7: him to land inside the prison grounds before they made

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Speaker 7: it an escape. Now they spent the next forty five

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Speaker 7: days on the run before police caught up with him.

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Speaker 7: He then spent another fifteen years in jail.

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Speaker 1: As that store, he was being covered live on the

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Speaker 1: John Laws program in the most thrilling and dramatic way possible.

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Speaker 1: You know, John Laws had people calling in from all

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Speaker 1: over Sydney describing what they were seeing. That form of energy. Now,

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Speaker 1: where is that?

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Speaker 4: Well, that's exactly what we saw last month. If that

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Speaker 4: happened now, as you say, everyone have their iPhones out,

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Speaker 4: there'd be vision of it. Someone would have put a

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Speaker 4: drone up next to the helicopter. Instead of people calling

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Speaker 4: in and describing stuff, we would have seen it. Because

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Speaker 4: everyone is fast to react and it's not even about

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Speaker 4: getting exclusive vision. Now, because you saw the terror attack

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Speaker 4: last month, some French guy who filmed it from across

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Speaker 4: the Street. He's just put it on social media. That

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Speaker 4: vision would have been something that television networks would have

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Speaker 4: once upon a time paid one hundred thousand dollars for

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Speaker 4: because ah, this exclusive vision. Now it's just online. The

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Speaker 4: world owns it within minutes, and that's just that's the

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Speaker 4: mindset of people. And they've all got their phones and

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Speaker 4: they're not No one's calling up trying to sell it.

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Speaker 4: It's live and hey, I've got this news and it's

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Speaker 4: happening now.

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Speaker 1: So what's the value add for legacy media outlets? Then

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Speaker 1: for sites like The Australian and for say Channel seven News,

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Speaker 1: how do they make sure that people don't just consume

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Speaker 1: that on X.

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Speaker 4: Well, I think we're moving into an unprecedented era of

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Speaker 4: artificial intelligence where it is going to be impossible. It's

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Speaker 4: already difficult. In the next year, next two years, it

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Speaker 4: is going to be impossible to tell what is real

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Speaker 4: and what is fake online. So the jobs of journalists

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Speaker 4: and trusted news outlets is going to be more important

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Speaker 4: than ever. What we're going to see hopefully, and I

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Speaker 4: assume it's the same thing that happened with X. Initially

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Speaker 4: everyone was like journalism's dead, it's going to be citizen

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Speaker 4: journalists on x telling everyone what's happening live, and then

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Speaker 4: ultimately everyone we don't know which tweets are real, who's

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Speaker 4: disseminating this, who's telling us what's right, And it's going

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Speaker 4: to become even more important in the era of artificial intelligence.

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Speaker 4: There's going to be so many clips online, there's going

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Speaker 4: to be so much disinformation. The really critical thing is

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Speaker 4: going to be professional journalists sifting through it, going this

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Speaker 4: is real, this is not real.

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Speaker 3: You can believe this. And we saw that even.

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Speaker 4: With the terror attacks last month, we saw everyone saying,

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Speaker 4: is this real? Can we trust this? There is speculation

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Speaker 4: there's a third gunman in Dover Heights or Double Bay.

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Speaker 3: Trust me.

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Speaker 4: I was walking through Double Bay at the time and

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Speaker 4: everyone was screaming down from balconies, get inside, there's a

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Speaker 4: gunman in Doube And then you're like, well, but yes,

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Speaker 4: I've read the Australian, I've read the Daily Telegraph. The

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Speaker 4: two government have been apprehended, and that's a source that

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Speaker 4: you can trust. AI will just repeat stories that AI

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Speaker 4: has done and use itself as the source and become

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Speaker 4: self perpetuating. So that's where it's going to be really

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Speaker 4: important for journalists to really tell people what you can

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Speaker 4: trust and what you can't. With Alan Jones's case, there

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Speaker 4: are going to be people talking about rumors that they've

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Speaker 4: heard and once again become incumbent on the media to

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Speaker 4: handle that responsibly. What we're also going to see with

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Speaker 4: the Alan Jones case is that it's in the local

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Speaker 4: court and people are going to be saying, all right,

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Speaker 4: so what is it going to be a slap on

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Speaker 4: the wrist and four months and you know, in the

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Speaker 4: local court, what's the worst that can happen to him?

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Speaker 4: The worst that can happen to Alan Jones is the shame.

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Speaker 4: So you know, whether or not at the end of

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Speaker 4: this he gets found guilty or not. If he is

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Speaker 4: found guilty, whether he gets jail time a fine, that's

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Speaker 4: really irrelevant. We're talking about someone who is in the

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Speaker 4: Australian Media Hall of Fame. If he is found guilty,

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Speaker 4: he's off that he's in the Australian Sports Hall of Fame.

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Speaker 4: You know, is really successful. Wallaby's coach. Everything he has

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Speaker 4: will be taken away from him and for people in

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Speaker 4: these important positions, and the way he is setting himself

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Speaker 4: up in life is that his personality, his ego, his

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Speaker 4: reputation is the center of his universe. So the worst

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Speaker 4: thing that can happen Talan Jones isn't jail time.

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Speaker 3: It is the shame. Steve Jackson, thank you very much,

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Speaker 3: Thank you for having me on Claire.

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Speaker 1: Steve Jackson is The Australian's Media Diary editor. You can

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Speaker 1: read all Jacko's journalism anytime at the Australian dot com

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Speaker 1: dot a u