Former ABC radio presenter Josh Szeps has made a strong defence of Alan Jones, who faces multiple indecent assault charges, suggesting the fallen king of talkback is the victim of a ‘gleeful’ media ‘witch hunt’.
Szeps said he worked as a producer for Jones early in his career and rejected sexual advances from the older man but did not find them offensive.
‘Every time he was rebuffed, which was every time because I had no interest in that, he backed off and usually laughed it off,’ Szeps said during an episode of his podcast Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps.
‘It wasn’t for me anything sinister, it wasn’t for me anything threatening. It was playful, it was excessively romantic.’
Szeps expressed cynicism about the arrest of Jones, 83, after the sheen had long worn off from his years of ruling Sydney‘s radio ratings.
The media had pounced on Jones only when he was a much-diminished figure, Szeps argued.
‘Much of the public and the media establishment have responded to this news with a kind of breathless, prurient glee … at the comeuppance of such a divisive figure,’ he said.
‘This raises all kinds of questions about power, and sexuality, about retributive justice, consent, and the role that the media should play in helping us to evaluate all those things.
Former ABC radio presenter Josh Szeps has accused the media of mounting a witch hunt for the scalp of Alan Jones
Jones, who Szeps once worked for early in his career, faces mutiple charges of indecent assault and related matters
‘And the media’s doing a pretty lousy job.’
The podcast last week drew widespread outrage and condemnation on social media prompting Szeps to explain his motivations on Sunday.
‘What I wanted to have is a clear, thoughtful, rational conversation about fairness, consent, changing norms, sexuality, hypocrisy. I wanted to challenge the simplistic way Alan’s enemies see him and the world,’ Szeps told the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘The reason I was dreading it (talking about Jones’s arrest) was because it’s hard. It’s hard not to be misunderstood when the stakes are high and emotions are raw and everyone’s hunkered in a cultural war of attrition.
‘I’m one of the heedless fools trying to step out of the trenches into no man’s land and say: ‘Can we just pause and think for a moment about what we’re doing here, folks?’
‘We just have to grow the f**k up. We’re not going to survive the 21st century if we behave like kindergarteners, picking goodies and baddies.
‘We need to stop this infantile game of assigning everyone a tribe and cheering or booing each other on. People ask me what ‘side’ I’m on.
‘What is this, an Avengers movie? Are you eight years old? Life is messy. There aren’t sides. There is only clear thinking.’
Jones was arrested on Monday at his luxury Circular Quay apartment.
He is facing a total of 26 charges related to alleged indecent assault and sexual touching.
The charges include 11 counts of aggravated indecent assault, 11 counts of assault with act of indecency, 2 counts of sexually touching another person without consent, 2 counts of common assault.
The youngest alleged victim was 17-years-old at the time of the alleged offences.
Jones’s high profile lawyer, Chris Murphy, said he would be defending the charges. He is scheduled to appear in Downing Centre Local Court on December 18.
