ACMA and Alan Jones Judgment
Wednesday 30 October 2013 @ 10.22 a.m. | IP & Media | Legal Research
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has recently had cause to reprimand radio talk back host Alan Jones for further breaches of the "commercial radio code of practice" reports the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) for "making unsubstantiated comments about power station closures and the salaries of climate change bureaucrats".
A third complaint that Jones got his facts wrong about the National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout costs was rejected by ACMA, and although as SMH reports ACMA was critical of Jones for the use of "exaggerated and emotive terms, such as white elephant and disaster" as on past occasions Mr Jones was deemed to be expressing his opinion and not fact and appears to have escaped serious sanction. Mr Jones' employer Radio 2GB has been found to be in breach for its failure to properly respond to two complaints made against it, one of which the station licensee Harbour Radio Pty Ltd had deemed to be frivolous.
Factual inaccuracy claims
Regarding factual inaccuracy the Delimiter reports that "it appears as though the complainants’ claim[ing] that Jones was wrong were accurate on several counts". An example quoted by Delimiter point to the global telecommunications industry and the fact that currently almost universally there is agreement in every country that telecommunication will continue to be served up as a "mixture of fixed and wireless infrastructure" and not purely wireless as claimed by Mr Jones.
Other cited inaccuracies include:
- a comment that the NBN will be obsolete before it is built
- a statement that only 15 percent of households have bothered to connect to the NBN where it has been rolled out
While the statement that the NBN was behind schedule and hopelessly over budget was as reported said to "contain some grounding in truth".
Statements defined as Opinion OK if not correct or factual
The report of ACMA's investigation released 29 October 2013 found there was "no factual basis to Mr Jones' statement" regarding the NBN. Another breach is said to have occurred during the Jones' Breakfast Show in the same month when Jones attributed the closure of two power plants to the carbon tax. ACMA is reported by SMH as "in discussion" with 2GB about "remedial measures".
Delimiter reports that:
"in its judgement published last week . . . the ACMA did not consider whether Jones’ claims were factually accurate or not, because it instead firstly defined them as being opinion rather than statements of fact. Because Jones’controversial NBN claims could be classed as opinion, ACMA ruled, their factual inaccuracy was not an issue it could address".
These breaches come after Jones was also taken to task for making inaccurate claims relating to climate change and the percentages of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere.
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