kiteboy dave said...dinsdale said...kiteboy dave said...
^^ Alan Jones is in trouble for coming out with nonsense and claiming it as a fact. He is allowed to say anything he likes as long as it's clear that it's his opinion and he's not trying to pass it off as a scientific fact.
Opinion/nonsense/idea/hypothesis/notion/feeling/conspiracy | Fact
Two different things separated by a huge wall.
Some people can't see the wall and merrily charge from one side to the other..
Well that's your opinion anyway.
No, it's a fact.

Completely right Daveboy
Alan Jones made a statement that he claimed to be fact. Somebody complained to the obudsman.
The ombudsman asked the station to justify what he said as being true, or as being reasonable to believe as true, or as having a independant source which itself was claiming it to be true.
Now, what the station said was not 'here's the evidence' or even 'here are some other people who are also claiming it to be true' - but their official reply was 'the station did not derive these facts, Alan Jones' conducted his own research and we believe this statement came out of his own imagination'.
Not much back up from the station then. Alan Jones chose not to provide anything in his defence.
Hence the ombudsman had to uphold the complaint as being in breach of the station's licence to provide factual and truthful broadcasting.
If Jones had said 'in my opinion less than 0.0000000001% of CO2 is produced by man' or even 'yes obudsman, here is a web page that is claiming this and I read it and had no reason to believe it wasn't true' or even 'the atmosphere is 0.4% Co2, the atmosphere is 1 billion m3, man produces 1 m3 of Co2 per year, hence less than 0.00000001% has come from man' (or whatever the numbers are) then he would not have been in trouble.
But he didn't, he made a statement claiming to be fact which he could not justify and he is operating on a licensed radio station, not a public internet forum for freaks and weirdo's (like I am, therefore I am not in breach of any licence when I knowingly lie).