Every single headline covering the legal proceedings involving Alan Jones follows a predictable, lazy script. The media industrial complex feasts on the superficial drama. A prominent athlete steps forward, testifies about a shirtless photograph sent before an unwanted interaction, and the public scrambles for their pitchforks or popcorn.
Stop.
The entire narrative framing is missing the point. We are obsessing over the sensational trivia—the text messages, the garments, the explicit details of personal encounters—while ignoring the structural pathology of power dynamics in elite institutions. Focusing on the digital breadcrumbs of a single incident allows everyone to avoid confronting the systemic rot that enables powerful figures to operate unchecked for decades.
Let us look at the mechanics of how these scandals actually function. For years, powerful men in media and sports build untouchable fiefdoms. They control access, funding, and career trajectories. When an athlete or a junior staffer interacts with someone of that stature, the standard rules of social engagement do not apply. Power distorts consent, coercion wears the mask of mentorship, and compliance is often mistaken for participation.
Yet the public discourse reduces this to a tabloid soap opera. Analysts debate whether sending a photograph prior to an encounter implies invitation or complicity. That is a trap. It shifts the burden of policing behavior from the predator to the prey. It asks why the victim engaged, rather than examining why the predator felt entitled to cross boundaries in the first place.
I have watched this playbook run its course across multiple industries for decades. When the walls finally start to cave in on a titan, the defense mechanism of the establishment is always the same. They isolate the individual. They pretend the behavior was an anomaly, a bad actor operating in a vacuum, rather than the predictable output of a system designed to protect perpetrators.
The media loves the theatre of the courtroom because it requires zero institutional accountability. Broadcasting testimony about who sent what image keeps eyeballs glued to screens. It transforms a systemic failure of governance, oversight, and cultural protection into a spectator sport. Meanwhile, the structures that allowed the behavior to persist remain entirely untouched.
If we want to fix this, we have to stop treating these cases as moral melodramas and start treating them as governance failures. That means auditing the enablers, the HR departments that looked the other way, the executives who prioritized ratings or athletic victories over human dignity, and the legal teams that weaponized confidentiality agreements.
Blaming the victim for sending a photograph is the ultimate distraction. It is time to look past the tabloid headlines and dismantle the machinery that keeps these predators in power.
The trial will end. The headlines will fade. The powerful will find new ways to insulate themselves. Unless we change how we hold institutions accountable, the cycle will repeat with a different cast of characters and a new set of leaked text messages.
