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Say it ain't so, Mr Laws

Cash for radio comments scandal

by Simon Longstaff

Can we trust the whole story?

As controversy swirls around his golden microphone, it would seem that Australian talkback radio host John Laws is genuinely perplexed that anybody should think ill of him for deciding to end his campaign of criticism of the banks in return for a fee of about AU$1.2 million.

As far as he is concerned, the matter has been blown out of all proportion. He is just a simple entertainer who has been lucky enough to be presented with a legitimate commercial opportunity to make an honest buck.

As for all this talk about ethics, well, “I'm not a journalist and I don't pretend to be a journalist. I'm an entertainer ... there isn't a hook for ethics.”

If only life were so simple.

The first thing to be said about Laws's response is that he seems mistaken in thinking that ethical obligations exist only for people bound by formal codes of ethics (such as journalists). Most people would accept that they are bound to act ethically – irrespective of whether a rule or code exists.

This is true for people in general. For example, lying is usually considered to be wrong – whether a rule exists against it or not. However, if we want to be more particular, it is also true for entertainers (as many in the sporting community have recently discovered, to their cost).

I am sure that Laws would agree that there are some things that should not be done in the name of entertainment. I doubt that he would endorse acts of cruelty against children, animals or others unable to fend for themselves. He would rightly condemn that kind of thing being done in the name of entertainment, even if no formal rule or law prevented it.

Indeed, we might hope that Laws would be one of the first to speak out against such behaviour.

However, if he were to do so on his radio program, could we believe him? How could we tell if he was being sincere?

Laws has made it clear that when he broadcasts each morning he plays a kind of role, much as an actor would do onstage. Professional actors regularly appear in public and recite lines written for them by others. That they play a villain (or a saint, for that matter) is meaningless when it comes to forming a judgement about them as people.

If they say rotten things in the course of a performance, we should remember that it is not the person behind the mask who speaks. It is just a character in a play – a mere fiction.

The difficulty for Laws (and most of his listeners) stems from the fact that he plays a character called John Laws – so closely identified with him as to be almost indistinguishable. Yet he (and especially we) needs to keep in mind that what the character says may bear no relationship to what the entertainer believes.

Laws's acting is, of course remarkably compelling. In fact, it is good enough to have convinced a host of notable public figures – including prime ministers – that it is worth their while to court his good opinion of them. That's why so many have lined up outside his studios during critical periods in the nation's recent history. As it turns out, they might have saved their time and come to a commercial arrangement. For a suitable fee, it would have been possible to arrange for Laws (the entertainer) to endorse pretty well any view that money can buy.

The reality is that Laws's program covers a huge range of topics in any one year. In terms of the millions of words spoken by him over his career, a relative handful will have been closely scripted in line with the requirements of a sponsor.

To his credit, Laws is pretty consistent in identifying paid advertisements when he reads these to his listeners. In other words, he makes a real attempt to let his listeners know when he is shifting gear.

So there are many times when the entertainer is free to improvise – to broadcast freestyle. Indeed, it is just these times that his listeners probably value the most. When 'Lawsy' lets fly at some incompetent government department or castigates the follies of those who run the criminal justice system, the listeners take heart that there is a voice of reason in the land.

I suspect most of them believe that Laws really believes what he says. I suspect they would be disappointed to learn that his words are just those of an entertainer and that the views expressed have been crafted for entertainment value alone.

Laws's apparent agreement to drop any critical comments about the banks (irrespective of what he really believes) risks breaking that bond of trust. Having campaigned so hard and for so long against the nation's banks, Laws's listeners probably thought that he really meant what he was saying. If Laws finally came to understand that his criticism of the banks had been unbalanced and unfair, then he probably should have said so – for free.

At the very least, this would have removed any grounds for the cynical suggestion that the earlier campaign, against the banks, had been run in order to soften up his target for a well-timed approach offering his services to make good the damage done.

Laws's huge audience sticks with him precisely because it believes that the views he expresses are those of a real person who genuinely cares about the things that it cares about. In other words, it trusts Laws in a way that you would never trust a mere character in a play. And, deep down, I think that he knows it.

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