Should we care about Sean Plunket's departure from talk radio?

Friday, 12 February 2021

Sean Plunket, broadcaster and a vent for the “deplorables”.

OPINION: Journalists in New Zealand rarely come out in support of other local journalists.

You won’t see journalists rallying behind one of their own like the public did for the lovely John Campbell when his show was ditched.

This might be because, with so few media organisations in the country, a journalist who could be the subject of our potential support will usually be working for the competition.

No surprise then that journalists and columnists did not exactly leap to support Sean Plunket, who left Magic Talk, a MediaWorks radio station, under what looked like murky circumstances this week.

John Banks failed to challenge a caller who made derogatory remarks about Māori culture.

* Sean Plunket has left Magic Talk

* Sean Plunket off-air after reports he was asked to leave the station

Just to recap, the fuss started with former MP and ACT politician John Banks, who was filling in for another host, failing to challenge a caller who spouted some derogatory remarks about Māori culture.

Disgraced Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

The exchange led to advertisers threatening to withdraw their lucre from the programme. It's hard to know how serious the outrage was, but it certainly made the mainstream news. Plunket, who was not involved in the Banks episode, had his show apparently suspended and then left after a chat with his bosses.

I need to disclose I hardly ever listen to talkback radio and when I do, it’s the inane gibberish of sports talkback. The only interview Plunket did in his talkback role, that I have listened to in full, was one he did with my boss, Mark Stevens, about the Stuff apology to Māori.

Plunket was hectoring, abrasive, shallow, belligerent and generally obnoxious. In other words exactly what you want in a populist talkback jock pandering to a certain market segment. He is a cultural warrior on the side of the deplorables.

Talkback is not a counselling session where every caller is taught to be reasonable and sensitive. It is not a barber shop or a hairdressing salon where the attendant listens politely and asks a few friendly questions. I imagine that most callers are ill-informed cranks who a talkback host must tolerate and perhaps egg on in the hope the next caller has a coherent view, but clearly a lot of people do enjoy it.

MediaWorks may have decided Plunket was simply too risky given his previous form.

Stuff senior reporter and columnist Martin van Beynen.

In December, the Broadcasting Standards Authority fined the network $3000 and ordered Plunket to apologise for an “offensive and harmful” interview with an iwi spokesman. Before taking up the Magic gig, he had been in the news for tweeting the question, “anyone else feeling for Harvey Weinstein?”

The question, of course, is whether anyone is feeling for Sean Plunket.

As a thinking man's redneck, I sort of am, for several reasons.

Like a lot of people, I’m struggling with the rapid change in the new moral and political climate.

The silencing of Plunket suggests mainstream broadcasters are so concerned about toeing the politically correct line that someone who echoes a sceptical and possibly prejudiced public cannot be tolerated. This appears to be on the basis that if we get rid of everyone who disagrees with current trends, the audience will just go away and reform.

Plunket gave voice to discomfort and reaction to change and the overreach of liberals and the left. He might be a populist poster boy for the old-school NZ First voter but that’s not a good reason to shut him down.

Another worry is that Plunket's departure from Magic Talk appears to have been driven by advertisers worried their business could be hurt if they are associated with the show. Sometimes media organisations just have to tell advertisers to get lost in the interests of higher principles like the value of the fourth estate and free speech.

There is always a danger that hosts like Plunket stir up hatred and provide solace for racists and bigots reacting against the curtailment of their entitlement and privilege.

United States talk radio stars like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck stand accused of encouraging and inflaming the crazies who nearly took over the White House in January.

“It is time to rip and claw and rake,” Beck said on his January 4 broadcast. “It is time to go to war, as the left went to war four years ago.”

We need to remember we are not a powder keg nation. An off remark will not set off riots in the streets and see shops burnt down. We can take it and should not expect all debate to be sensitive, respectful and totally reasonable. Surely we are not so fragile that a controversial talkback host who challenges the new orthodoxy, even if he is a reactionary, cannot be tolerated.

Maybe Plunket doesn't for a minute believe wholeheartedly in what he says and believes his callers are generally a bunch of morons and bigots, and an insult to his intelligence. Maybe he got a sweet settlement from his employer. But we cannot pretend his audience does not exist and trying to shut them up will only lead to them popping up somewhere else.