As you look around in the traffic on a weekday morning, about 1 in every 5 car radios will be tuned to Alan Jones.

That's throughout Sydney.  Alan's show is syndicated elsewhere with highlights packages sent to stations all over the country.

Whether you like Alan or not, hundreds of thousands of people listen to his show.   Publishing a statement on Alan's show puts the statement directly in the public domain and clearly on the public record.

Add in internet listeners and downloads, and  Alan's broadcasts are actively listened to and understood by a large bloc of us.   People talk; and radio is a very effective way to impart understanding.   We get it when we hear it.

Yesterday some very serious allegations were made about the current Prime Minister  on Alan's show.   Alan's gift is to make the complex simple.  I have received overwhelming feedback from people who heard and understood the allegations about the Prime Minister and the basis for making those allegations.   Many people  draw an adverse inference from  the lack of a defence or legal action from the Prime Minister.   But others, assisted by much of the media, can just write it off because it was said on Alan Jones's show.   That is unhealthy, that we can be so unremarkably accepting of a brush-off because something  was "just said by Alan Jones".

The allegations on Alan's show were strong, clearly defined and given without the benefit of parliamentary privilege.

Yet there is no follow up, no reporting, and no further main-stream media call for the Prime Minister to provide detailed answers to the now open questions.   She can continue to stroll untroubled by any sense of a broad community consensus, represented in the media, that the issues need to be cleared up.

I see that as a significant failing of our media.   There's a story either way - either Alan, 2GB and I were wrong to make those statements so publicly, or we were right and the PM has a case to answer.

Compare these allegations of corruption and gross dishonesty involving a sitting Prime Minister and their coverage - with the sustained media maelstron about Alan's off-the-cuff, throwaway private comments about the Prime Minister's late father.   

I have many mates in the media.  None of the senior people I speak with dispute the following statement, but the statement guides our media and thus what the nation learns about itself nonetheless.

Julia Gillard's credibility is very low.   She is not strongly believed.  Lots of us think she tells lies easily.   She spins and often does not make straight, truthful statements. Yet what Julia Gillard  says requires no corroboration, no proof, no fact-checking - it's simply and automatically reported as hard news, as fact because she says it.   Compare and contrast with the substantiation required for a Kernohan or Blewitt statement to be aired.

A radio show can't be the sole source of enquiry or comment on a topic as important as the Prime Minister's fitness for office.   I would have thought in a health democracy, the chatter throughout our media organs would be deafening.

But strangely we just nod and accept it because that's the way it is.

And we get on with our lives while certain categories of crooks can get on blissfully unchallenged with theirs; simply because of who they are and who it is that's talking about them.

(This is the most recent Sydney radio ratings survey.)