‘Every radio personality could be brought down’

ANDREW Jarman is just the beginning. There are producers all over the country who have enough dirt to bring down every radio personality who’s ever lived.

FOR anyone who’s worked in radio, the story of Andrew Jarman’s eloquent parenting advice being unintentionally broadcast to the South Australian masses would have sent a chill down their spine.

Not because “Just f*** the guts out of ‘em with your big c**k” isn’t the phrase Shakespeare would have chosen to issue such sage wisdom but because there isn’t a radio personality alive who hasn’t said something in the studio that, if unedited, could have resulted in their immediate termination. And after 14 years in radio I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t heard worse.

Jarman’s explanation that he was merely passing on a technique that had worked so well for his “lovely wife Marion with our three children” failed to address the truth of the matter which was that he was in a studio with mates who wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at the comment and he never expected anyone else to hear it.

When a pre-recorded segment isn’t edited the way it should be, it takes away the one thing that means the difference between going home to your “lovely wife Marion” and driving to the Channel 7 studios to do an interview with Today Tonight, and that is context.

When you work in radio you have a massive responsibility when the microphone is in front of you. You’re there to entertain and inform in a way that’s respectful to your audience and that protects your reputation, and that often involves a heavy amount of self-censoring. Granted, there are a few exceptions but for most of us there’s no way you’d say half the things on-air that you’d say with a bunch of your closest mates. And usually your closest mates are the people you’re in a studio with for two hours a day.

I have no doubt there are audio producers all over the country who have enough dirt from editing interviews to bring down every radio personality who’s ever lived, but the difference is that all those things were said to people who didn’t find them offensive. Does that make those comments condonable, clever or right? Of course not, but unfortunately anyone who’s ever worked in a creative environment will tell you the PC boundaries are often pushed in a way that would make HR staff in other businesses’ toes curl.

Having worked as a comedy writer and a presenter on countless radio shows there is an accepted practice of getting the worst things out of your head so they don’t end up on the page or on the air. That doesn’t mean you’re offensive or disrespectful to the people you work with but that you ‘read the room’ and measure the threshold of what you say by those who are around you. So while Jarman’s comment was undoubtedly wrong, some consideration needs to be given to the fact that it was never intended to be heard by anyone outside the room. There isn’t a person alive inside or outside media who hasn’t said something at some point in their lives, that if broadcast to the masses wouldn’t have offended someone.

If Andrew Jarman knew he was live to air and made a conscious decision to broadcast that comment, the fact that it came out of his mouth would have been completely unjustifiable. Instead it’s an unfortunate insight into the locker room humour that shows there are still blokes out there who could do themselves and us a favour by reading a few more books … preferably ones published after 1950.

Will this slip up be embarrassing for Andrew Jarman? Absolutely. Will it mean he’ll never talk to his mates in a radio studio like that again? I doubt it.

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