In NSW if you troll a shock jock (albiet one as dumb as a box of hammers) expect to have the Polic Commissioner ring your work and get you sacked.
Welcome to the NSW , the merkinsock State
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national...1224956332703.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Photo: Anthony Johnson
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David Marr
November 1, 2008
AFTER monitoring talkback radio for years, Brent Balinski reached breaking point in July. Mucking around at Media Monitors one day he found on the website of 2GB's Chris Smith pictures of the shock jock's little kids in the bath. Balinski hadn't forgotten Smith's role in whipping up the great storm over Bill Henson's pictures of naked children. He thought: "Hypocrisy doesn't do it justice."
At the nation's leading monitoring service, they know it's hard to keep their staff listening to talkback. It takes its toll. Balinski was in what he calls a "boneheaded job" listening to shock jocks and sending SMS messages to politicians. Three years under the headphones had left him with a particular loathing for Smith: "A complete hack and a dupe of a man with an on-air persona that's contrived and blokey. Alan Jones without the brains."
So he decided to take him on. Balinski, 27, doesn't work at Media Monitors anymore. But how could he have predicted when the jape began that
Smith would enlist the Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, to track him down and have him sacked?
Balinski sent his first email to Smith on July 7: "I just thought I'd draw your attention to some disgusting, freely available pictures of children bathing (with no clothes on, of course. Appalling.)" The website address he gave was Smith's. "I hope you can get in contact with the web host and maybe make an example of this awful tripe on your program."
Smith rose to the bait on air: "The two shots he talks about … are happy, smiley family shots of my two adorable kids. One features the pair of them in a bath with only their noggins showing outside the bubbles, happily bathing with their ducky, and they're under three."
That someone might be having a bit of a lend, entirely passed Smith by.
Nor did the moniker
"Sef Gonzales" ring any bells.
Balinski concedes it wasn't much of a joke to use a famous murderer's name, but he was c**k-a-hoop that Smith didn't seem to twig. "I thought it was hilarious that this man who is supposed to be across current events didn't know who Sef Gonzales was."
"Sef" sent 2GB's afternoon broadcaster nearly 20 emails over the next six weeks, correcting his English, "defending" the Pope and free trade, "celebrating" Firepower ("Did you invest in Firepower? I hear a lot of very stupid people did") and pursuing the notion that Melbourne University Press had commissioned him to write the great broadcaster's "warts and all" biography.
Smith's instinctive response was biffo. "You deserve a smack in the mouth," he told "Sef" that first afternoon on air. "What a sad and jealous little psychotic prick you are," he emailed after receiving a list of questions from his would-be biographer. And when "Sef" pressed him for photographs for the book, Smith replied: "I look forward to smacking you right in the mouth for being such a pathetic waste of space!"
According to Balinski, these emails were circulated to an audience of about 50 colleagues at Media Monitors. This was the Smith they knew. On afternoons when the broadcaster was being particularly aggravating, Balinski's friends would urge him to get "Sef" onto the job. He obliged.
Workmate Serkan Ozturk had joined him giving ginger to Smith and one or two other talkback stars. Ozturk invented characters including the very stupid "Steve Stonerson" of Surry Hills and a stereotype lebanese called Hamdi Al-Kandi of Punchbowl who together sent Smith about 15 low-octane emails over the next few weeks.
Balinski's emails darkened. He invented "Sione (Johnny) Howard", a vigorous if barely intelligent defender of his people. "Hey bitch," he warned. "You didnt mention in ur bio that ur a racist shit against us islanderz. Hatemonger. Ur goin down."
Balinski knows this was rough. "That was overdoing it but I thought I'd made it clear that this was a parody of the sort of illiterate islander he was railing against." Though other light-hearted nonsense from "Sione" soon followed, it was too late. Smith called in the cops.
The fearless 2GB broadcaster wouldn't talk to the Herald about any of this. He reckons Balinski threatened his family, but where's the proof? And was he really afraid of "Sione"? Or was he just sick of it all? Didn't he have an inkling these emails were spoofs? Smith won't help.
Smith said in a statement to the Herald: "My family was genuinely fearful."
He didn't mess about. "I spoke to the Police Commissioner about these threats," he told his listeners. "I thank Andrew Scipione for appointing an experienced team of investigators who tracked back the origins of the emails, the server, the IP signature and also the workplace."
The police turned up at Media Monitors on September 10. Balinski and Ozturk were dismissed. Smith denounced his "stalkers" to The Daily Telegraph then named these "idiots" and "cretinous cowards" on air. Smith was himself to the end: "If they came within 20 metres of me I'd have had a great deal of satisfaction punching their lights out and I probably would have gone a little bit too far."
Smith is ploughing on regardless. Ozturk is contesting his sacking. Balinski is taking it on the chin: "I'd been a bit of a dickhead. If I were my employer, I'd fire me."
