Frances Morton: Tick tock shock jock

Paul Henry's reaction after reading the name of Delhi's chief minster Sheila Dikshit. Photo / Supplied.

Everybody knows: Breakfast television is meant to be bland. But Paul Henry’s gonzo journalism is following down the well-trodden path of shock jock infamy – and that path never ends well.

Paul Henry is a new man this week. The old Henry we knew was a amiable-sounding "television host". Or "presenter". Sometimes even "journalist".

This week his name is barely mentioned without the accompanying description "shock jock". With emphasis on the shock.

On Monday Henry asks the Prime Minister whether the next Governor-General will "look and sound like a New Zealander" setting off the media version of Christchurch's 7.1 bone-shaker, with aftershocks that keep trembling for days. Just when Henry thinks a cheeky wink and brush-off on-air apology will calm the rumbles the shocks keep coming - a tsunami of public complaints cause TVNZ to back-track on their initial tin-eared "it's what we're all thinking but too afraid to say" response and suspend Henry for two weeks. Reporters lie in ambush at his gate.

And, instead of tapering away, the shocks get worse as Henry's previous offensive jibes at the Delhi chief minister's name (reported in last week's Herald on Sunday) resurface. New Zealand's High Commissioner is called in to apologise to the Indian Government which in turn lodges a formal complaint.

The clip of Henry's giggling and squawking over Sheila Dikshit's name is top trending on YouTube with more than 100,000 views by the end of the week - and rising.

Two weeks ago TVNZ public relations woman Andi Brotherston was boasting to media about how people had logged into YouTube to watch Paul Henry's "C-Bomb" speech to the television awards. She wasn't boasting about his latest YouTube hit.

An early morning slot on a state broadcaster such as TVNZ is not the natural habitat for a shock jock. Usually they are found on late night commercial radio, deliberately rucking up audiences with offensive posturing to provoke outrage and response from talkback callers.

Mark Aldridge, head of radio at New Zealand Broadcasting school, says shock jocks have a set of well-worn button pushers. "It's always politics, racism, sexism, taste and decency. They're the things that the broadcasting codes look at and say be wary of." Henry has a history of raising ire with his comments relating to several of these categories. Who can forget the "moustache on a lady" episode? Or Henry calling Susan Boyle "retarded" and declaring homosexuality "unnatural"?

Yet, until now, Henry has largely avoided the mantle "shock jock". Broadcaster James Coleman, former presenter on TV3's now defunct morning show Sunrise and radio presenter for Radio Live and George FM, doesn't categorise Henry as a shock jock but says his outbursts particularly stand out because they are broadcast in what is normally a tame environment.

"In my experience breakfast TV is a very reserved and conservative area," says Coleman. In broadcasting, be it commercial radio or the nation's biggest television station, the aim of the game is to attract audience attention, and Henry excels at that.

"You can listen to someone interview umpteen people about pet psychology and home decor and that can be nice wallpaper listening or you can listen to something that cuts through and your imagination is captured or you're infuriated and flabbergasted," says Coleman. "In this day and age when there are so many options, it's just a scrabble to be noticed."

Serial headline-hound Michael Laws did his own mouthing off about Sir Anand Satyanand this week, launching into a tirade about the Governor-General's weight on Radio Live just hours after Henry's comments went to air.

"I mean, we don't all expect Indians to be begging on the streets of New Delhi," says Laws. "But it's like Anand discovered the buffet table at, like, 20 and he's never really left it."

Laws was not sitting on a couch opposite the Prime Minster at the time and the audience reach of his show is much less than Breakfast. The comments went unreported until now.

Shocking people on air is nothing new, says Aldridge, who names the well-loved Uncle Scrim as one of New Zealand's first broadcast provocateurs.

Colin Scrimgeour was a broadcaster in the 1930s who used radio to make political and religious comment. In 1935 he was to make an address supporting Labour before the election and his broadcast was jammed, allegedly by the National Minister for Post and Telegraph at the time.

Internationally, Coleman names American radio personality Howard Stern as the "pinnacle" of shock jocks.

The authorities agree.

Stern is the most heavily fined broadcaster by the Federal Communications Commission, racking up more than US$2.5 million in penalties for comments such as this clanger about the Columbine high school gunmen: "There were some good-looking girls running out with their hands over their heads. Did those kids try to have sex with any of the good-looking girls? At least if you're going to kill yourself and kill all the kids, why wouldn't you have some sex? If I was going to kill some people, I'd take them out with sex."

Controversy does little harm to the world's high-profile shock jocks. Britain's Russell Brand was suspended from the BBC in 2008 after making on-air prank calls to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs and making obscene comments about having sex with his granddaughter. That hasn't been any setback to Brand's career: he is a comedian, an actor, has a best-selling book and is a red-carpet favourite with his fiancee, pop-star Katy Perry.

Meanwhile, stony-faced Australian shock jock Kyle Sandilands - a judge on the hit television show The X-Factor - was suspended from Sydney's 2Day FM last year after asking a 14-year-old rape victim about her sexual history in a "lie detector" segment. She disclosed she had been raped at the age of 10 but he brushed it off.

Just days after being back on air he provoked another public outcry when he said actress Magda Szubanski could have lost more weight in a concentration camp than on her Jenny Craig diet.

While Sandilands is adept at winding up audiences on a base and pop-culture level, other Aussie radio hosts have considerable political clout.

Journalist Paul Kelly wrote in the Australian in 2001: "There was once a time when public opinion was mobilised at street rallies, town halls, from the pulpit or around the trades hall. Forget it. Radio jocks are the new mobilisers and organisers of mass opinion."

Talkback host Alan Jones was instrumental in setting the tone of the "children overboard" scandal when it was erroneously reported Afghan refugees had thrown their children into the ocean to force Australia to rescue them. It became a major election issue in 2001 and a contributing factor to John Howard returning to power.

Four years later Jones was found to have played a role in inciting the Cronulla race riots with his comments about "Middle Eastern grubs". The Australian Communications and Media Authority found his comments were "likely to encourage violence or brutality and to vilify people of Lebanese and Middle-Eastern backgrounds on the basis of ethnicity".

Barry Curtis, a lecturer in sociology at Auckland University, doesn't think Paul Henry defines a political agenda in the same way.

"Paul Henry isn't defining anything, he's just appealing to a racist set of opinions," says Curtis. "He wraps it up around a cute persona - I don't regard that as particularly shaping opinion. He's aiming for shock value and the lowest common denominator."

One local radio host whose unashamed quest for shock value has left him in the broadcast wilderness a number of times is Iain Stables.

One of his most egregious pranks was impersonating a detective from Interpol and getting his colleagues detained and searched at Los Angeles airport.

Stables was convicted and fined for the stunt but generally the punishment for breaching broadcasting standards is handed out by the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

Coleman says some broadcasters consider a BSA complaint as a "badge of honour". Often the programme directors are happy with some extra publicity and they don't get too upset about a small fine. "It seems like a slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket most of the time," says Coleman.

There is a constant pressure to see how far broadcasters can go: "I think there is always the desire to entertain and attract an audience and if attracting an audience means pushing boundaries, the media will do that," says Aldridge. "Occasionally by pushing boundaries you will cause offence. If they get away with it that sets a new benchmark."

When a presenter becomes a celebrity with market pull and power, the challenge is how to manage them effectively, Aldridge adds. "They become the inmates ruling the asylum."

Mostly, broadcasters operate on their own judgment. Two weeks ago, TVNZ's newsreader Simon Dallow cautioned sports presenter Andrew Saville on air when he made a sweeping comment about Pakistanis being cheats in a story relating to premier league football.

Dallow, who obviously has a more finely-tuned sensitivity antennae, called him up on it, remarking: "Nothing like a broad brush of typecasting."

TVNZ spokeswoman Andi Brotherston, who offered her resignation after her handling of the Henry situation, said at the time that the comment was in no way racist and anyone with a sense of humour who followed sport would understand Saville was referring to the Pakistani cricketing scandal. "Andrew Saville is a very funny man," she retorted.

Yet Saville served up his own a mea culpa during the next night's bulletin. "And, after last night's effort, it's a good night from me."

Thus, another potentially racist situation was diffused.

While we stand back and watch the aftershocks of Henry's disaster roll on, Coleman says there is no way we have seen the last of the TVNZ star. "If you were Rick Ellis you'd be an absolute moron to fire him," says Coleman. "He is not going anywhere. It's really about managing the fall-out."

Massey journalism lecturer James Hollings says the blame lies at the top and it's Ellis' head that should roll. "The real problem here is that TVNZ bosses have created a monster to try and make money and they are too afraid to put it down. Roman emperors faced the same problem - creating nasty spectacles may be popular in the short term but has a way of getting out of control."