In a development that will surprise absolutely no one who has ever listened to talkback radio, a Sydney court has heard that Alan Jones and fellow 2GB shock jock Jason Morrison routinely referred to the Sydney Morning Herald and its chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont as “pigs in the media.”

The revelation came during Morrison’s testimony on Tuesday, where the prosecution accused him of “tailoring his evidence” about an alleged assault at a lower north shore restaurant to help his old mate Jones. Judge Glenn Walsh, who had earlier allowed the cross-examination, noted the crown had produced text messages in which Morrison clearly used the porcine epithet.

The whole sorry saga traces back to 2023, when reporting by the SMH and the Age prompted alleged victims to come forward, leading police to establish Strike Force Bonnefin. Jones was arrested in November 2024 and has pleaded not guilty to 20 charges of indecent assault and two counts of sexual touching against six complainants.

Prosecutor Georgina Wright read a 2020 text from Morrison to Jones, sent when Jones announced his retirement from 2GB, then owned by the Herald’s publisher Nine Entertainment (formerly Fairfax): “Thank Christ you’re getting out [of Nine Entertainment]. Let them fall into a bag of shit.”

Wright asked if Morrison agreed he’d expressed disdain for McClymont and the Herald. Morrison admitted to being critical, and when pressed on the “pigs in the media” phrase, he said, “That’s a phrase Alan used to use a lot.” He also confessed to a “longstanding pejorative view” of the paper, though he claimed he was “disappointed” that McClymont didn’t include his on-the-record comments in her article about Jones.

Then there’s the matter of the lunch. Complainant C, a young man in his 20s who worked for Jones, testified that his much older boss made him sit next to him and spent the meal with his left hand under the table, on C’s leg or penis over his pants. Morrison, the third witness to testify about the lunch, denied seeing or hearing anything inappropriate. He admitted joking that Jones and C looked “like a great couple” but insisted it was “lighthearted banter.”

Wright suggested Morrison was being “deliberately evasive” and had “tailored” his testimony to help Jones. Morrison, clearly affronted, replied, “Well that’s offensive. I’m here under oath, and I find that offensive.” He denied seeing Jones’s hand under the table, adding, “If I was aware of that and given … my forthright manner, I would have raised it. I didn’t because I didn’t see it.”

So there you have it: two radio personalities with a shared vocabulary of insults, a prosecutor with a sharp eye for convenient memory lapses, and a courtroom drama that’s more gripping than most of their broadcasts. Stay tuned for the next episode, where someone will inevitably claim they were just joking.