Pages

FCC ACTION: Letter to Label Alex Jones' Hoaxes as Fiction


____­­­­­­­­­­­­­_______________________________________________________­­­
(date)                  



Federal Communications Commission, Enforcement Bureau
Investigations & Hearings Division
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, D.C.  20554

RE: Violation of FCC Hoax Rule

Radio Station Call Letters: _____________________

Community of License:  _______________________________________________________________

To whom it may concern:

Over time, Alex Jones, on his radio program, has falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax; that no children were shot; that the grieving parents were actually paid actors; and that the entire shooting, which took the lives of 20 children and six adults was staged by gun control advocates to further their agenda. 

As a result of broadcasting this misinformation on our publicly owned airwaves, several parents of the slain children have been targeted by Jones’ listeners with threats to their lives.  As a result, Leonard Pozner, whose six-year old son Noah Pozner was one of the victims, received threatening voicemails: “You gonna die. Death is coming to you real soon.” The caller, Florida woman Lucy Richards, was convicted and sentenced to five months in prison. Pozner and his wife have relocated seven times to avoid harassment based on Jones’ remarks. Each time they have moved, their new locations have been published online. “Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying that despite our efforts at security, a determined conspiracy fanatic might gain entry to our home,” said Noah’s mother, Veronique De La Rosa in a court declaration. Added her husband, “Due to Mr. Jones’ broadcast, I have also suffered severe emotional distress and trauma which I cannot even begin to adequately describe. No human being should ever be asked to suffer through the torment Mr. Jones carried out.”

Other Sandy Hook parents have faced similar threats. There are currently several court cases against Alex Jones for perpetrating this hoax which has damaged peoples’ lives. The legal complaints say Jones does not actually believe the shooting was a hoax, but nevertheless he has repeatedly accused Sandy Hook families of faking their family members' deaths.

It is bad enough that Alex Jones is willfully lying about the veracity of one of the most heinous crimes ever committed in these United States. But Jones’ is using the nation’s publicly owned radio airwaves to spread these lies and to encourage his listeners to act, causing direct harm to innocent individuals who have already suffered more grief than any of us can know.

Radio station licensees are required as a condition of their licenses to “serve the public interest.” Clearly, Jones is serving his own interest, and this radio station is complicit in causing harm to those people who have suffered the most in the loss of their precious children. 

Jones is in clear violation of the FCC’s rule against airing hoaxes. Section 73.1217 of the Federal Communications Commission's rules, 47 C.F.R. § 73.1217, prohibits broadcast licensees or permittees from broadcasting false information concerning a crime or a catastrophe if: (1) the licensee knows this information is false; (2) it is foreseeable that broadcast of the information will cause substantial public harm; and (3) broadcast of the information does in fact directly cause substantial public harm.

Did the licensee of this radio station know that the Sandy Hook school shooting was real? Clearly it did. Was it foreseeable that broadcasting these lies would cause substantial public harm?  Yes, it was. Jones broadcast statements have knowingly caused public harm before.  Did the broadcast in fact directly cause public harm? It did. And Jones continues to do so.
The FCC hoax rule also states the following: If a station airs a disclaimer before the broadcast that clearly characterizes the program as fiction and the disclaimer is presented in a reasonable manner under the circumstances, the program is presumed not to pose foreseeable public harm.” 

As his lawyers once told a judge, Alex Jones is a “performance artist,” not a news man. 

I respectfully ask the FCC and the licensee of this station to enforce the FCC’s hoax rule which requires this conspiracy program to be clearly labeled as “fiction” so listeners will know Jones is not dealing in fact.

What follows is a partial list of Jones’ incendiary statements, as taken from court documents which victims of Jones’ abuse have filed.  All of these are believed to have been broadcast on his radio program. Find the court filings here: https://firstamendmentwatch.org/infowars-alex-jones-face-defamation-suits-sandy-hook-parents/

Many include clips curated by the watchdog group Media Matters and from actual broadcasts. Some reference YouTube clips of the broadcasts which are no longer available online, as YouTube, along with Facebook and other private social media companies have removed Jones’ content for repeatedly violating their standards of decency.  Here is a compilation: https://www.facebook.com/Mediamatters/videos/10155483202056167/

Hoaxes Broadcast on Alex Jones’ Radio Program

May 13, 2014
122. On May 13, 2014, The Alex Jones Radio Show broadcast an episode advertised on YouTube under the title “Bombshell: Sandy Hook Massacre Was A DHS Illusion Says School Safety Expert."24
123. That day, Jones hosted Wolfgang Halbig.
124. During this video, Halbig stated: “I think the reason they're not answering those questions 'cause I think it's going to expose their whole scam.”
23 The Alex Jones Channel, Dr. Steve Pieczenik: Sandy Hook was A Total False Flag!, YouTube (Mar. 27, 2013), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EfyD7Wu5fQ&t=18s. 24 Alex Jones Channel, Bombshell: Sandy Hook Massacre Was A DHS Illusion Says School Safety Expert,

125. Jones asked Halbig, “What are the big smoking guns... what are the big red flags?”!
126. Halbig responded, “The red flags is that you're looking at $29 million ... and there are 39 other community nonprofit organizations within Newtown that received a lot of funds."
Jones interjected: “You're saying a motive for the locals to go along with the fraud
127. is money."
128. Later, Jones prompted Halbig, “What about the kids going in circles, back and forth, the same people, into the school for the helicopters; it looked like a fake drill ... just go through those points.”
129. Jones summarized, stating, “The cover up is the prima facie proof of the larger crime, and that we're being lied to."
130. He continued, “The whole thing, you've got 'em jumping the gun . . . that Bloomberg was saying get ready the day before, get ready to fundraise on mass shootings ... had a false start, didn't you, Bloomy."
131. Jones was asserting that former Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg knew about the shooting beforehand. The clear implication of this statement is that the shooting was "staged" and a hoax.
132. Halbig understood Jones. He responded, “Children did not die, teachers did not die, on December 14, 2012.”
133. Halbig further stated, “Alex, we've never had a time in our history, where Sandy Hook, a school massacre, the biggest illusion ever portrayed by Homeland Security and FEMA."
134. During that show, Jones stated, in reference to the Sandy Hook shooting, "I mean it's fake ... it's fake ... you've got parents acting ... it just is the fakest thing since the three dollar bill.”
135. A reasonable person would understand these statements to assert that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, and that the plaintiff fabricated the death of his wife.
On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people



May 27, 2013
116. On May 27, 2013, Dr. Steve Pieczenik appeared on the Alex Jones Radio Show in an episode advertised on YouTube under the title "Sandy Hook was A Total False Flag!"
117. During that appearance, Pieczenik stated, “Sandy Hook was a total false flag. There was no individual involved; there was no Asperger's; there was no 24 kids who were killed."
118. In the parlance and narratives of mass-shooting conspiracy theorists, "false flag" is the idea that a shooting or other attack was staged by the government or other powerful forces.
119. A reasonable person would understand these statements to assert that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, and that the plaintiff fabricated the death of his wife.
On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.

December 28, 2014
164. On December 28, 2014, during The Alex Jones Radio Show, Jones took a call from Kevin, a listener who called in claiming to live close to Newtown, Connecticut.27
165. Kevin said, “I'm calling about Sandy Hook. My take on it is ... The whole thing is pretty much the next step in reality TV, because with other false flags, like 9/11 or Oklahoma City, or the Boston bombing, at least something happened. With Sandy Hook, there's no there there. You've got a bunch of people walking around a parking lot, pretty much what it comes down to.”
166. Jones interrupted Kevin. “No, no, I've had the investigators on the state police have gone public, you name it,” he said. “The whole thing is a giant hoax. And the problem is, how do you deal with a total hoax? How do you even convince the public something's a total hoax?”
167. Kevin responded, “I always tell people the same thing: go out and prove the official story. And... I know the millisecond this happened, with that now-fake picture of the kids being led out of the school, that there's nothing that's going to sell this agenda like dead elementary school kids."
168. Jones interrupted Kevin again. “The general public doesn't know the school was actually closed the year before,” he said. “They don't know they've sealed it all, demolished the building. They don't know that they had the kids going in circles in and out of the building as a photo-op. Blue screen, green screens, they got caught using.”
169. Jones continued, “People just instinctively know that there's a lot of fraud going on. But it took me about a year with Sandy Hook to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake. I mean, even I couldn't believe it. I knew they jumped on it, used the crisis, hyped it up. But then I did deep research and my gosh, it just pretty much didn't happen.”
170. A reasonable person would understand these statements to assert that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, and that the plaintiff fabricated the death of his wife.
On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio
171. affiliates.
27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGCfi otOCU.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

January 13, 2015
178. On January 13, 2015, during a broadcast of The Alex Jones Radio Show, Jones said, "Yeah, so, Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn't believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors. I mean they even ended up using photos of kids killed in mass shootings here in a fake mass shooting in Turkey— so yeah, or Pakistan. The sky is now the limit. I appreciate your call."
On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap-DvMOMOY

March 4, 2015
182. On March 4, 2015, The Alex Jones Radio Show broadcast an episode now advertised on YouTube under the title “New Bombshell Sandy Hook Information In-Bound.”29
183. Jones hosted Halbig on that episode.
184. During the broadcast, Jones asked Halbig to explain why Sandy Hook was "completely phony."
185. Halbig stated the school was not in operation at the time of the shooting.
186. Jones stated that the school was suddenly reopened, received a “falling report" [sic], and did not look like a real school.
187. Halbig stated that it was the “most filthiest [sic] most deplorable school” and "loaded with lead paint... asbestos ... PCP.”
188. Halbig stated that trauma helicopters were not called and that paramedics were not allowed to enter the school.
189. Jones stated, “I'm saying it was a drill, a giant piece of theater, did they really kill some kids? I don't know.”
190. Referring to video of parents of children killed in the shooting, Jones stated that "they ... bring in actors to break down and cry... used the same actors as different people.”
191. Both Jones and Halbig stated that Connecticut police ate lunch inside the school the day of the shooting.
192. his questions. Halbig encouraged listeners to contact the Newtown school board and ask them
194. On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people

May 28, 2015
196. On May 28, 2015, Infowars Nightly News broadcast an episode now advertised on YouTube under the title: "Sandy Hook: The Lies Keep Growing."30
197. David Knight hosted Halbig on Infowars Nightly News.
30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI3KVj2nVRA.
198. Halbig accused Newtown police chief Mike Kehoe of committing perjury.
199. Halbig once again appeared, and stated that the school was unsanitary and unsafe.
200. Halbig's website was repeatedly advertised and listeners were encouraged to support him financially.
201. A reasonable person would understand Halbig's statements to assert that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, and that the plaintiff fabricated the death of his wife.
202. On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
203. of people.

July 7, 2015
213. On July 7, 2015, The Alex Jones Radio Show broadcast a video now posted on YouTube with the title “Retired FBI Agent Investigates Sandy Hook: MEGA MASSIVE COVER UP.933
214. Jones noted, referring to the May 29, 2015 video, “I knew that we'd sent a reporter Da tadi there for days, to cover the city council hearings about it, the fact that they're sealing everything."34
215. "[T]he more we look at Sandy Hook," he said, “I don't want to believe it's a false flag. I don't know if kids really got killed, but you've got green screen with Anderson Cooper ... and then his nose disappears. It's fake! The whole thing, it's—I don't know what happened.”
216 He continued, "It's kind of, you see a hologram at Disney World in the haunted house. I don’t know how they do it, it's not real. When you take your kids to the haunted house and there a ghosts flying around, it's not real, it's staged ... I don't know what the trick is here, I got a good suspicion. But when you've got Wolfgang Halbig.... he went and investigated, no paperwork, no nothing, it's bull.”
217. Later, Jones stated, “But what about how for a mass shooting in Pakistan, they got photos of Sandy Hook kids," and referring to an Infowars article, stated, "it's like the same P.R. company is running this .... and then they try to hit us with fake copyright deals whenever we show this."
218. Jones put the article on the screen and read the headline: "Mystery: Sandy Hook Victim Dies (Again) in Pakistan."
219. A reasonable person would understand these statements to assert that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, and that the plaintiff fabricated the death of his wife.
220. On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
221. of people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c1179t7 ; https://www.mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2016/11/29/51284/gcn-alexjones-20150707-shooting ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YV1eWq8YSc. ;  https://www.youtube.coin/watch?v=iC0e3qlgyFA.


November 17, 2016  
222. On November 17, 2016, the Alex Jones Show broadcast an episode in which Alex Jones claimed that he had never claimed that Sandy Hook was a hoax. Almost immediately thereafter, he rehearsed a number of his common arguments that Sandy Hook was a hoax.
223. These included that “Anderson Cooper is using a green screen, his nose disappears"; "they have kids going in circles back into the buildings"; "the building was closed years before”; “it was filthy”; “no emergency helicopters were launched”; and “they're sealing the death certificates and everything."
224. Jones continued, “we've sent reporters up there, man, and that place is like Children of the Corn or something. I mean it is freaking weird."
225. Jones further referenced "weird videos of reported parents of kids laughing and then all of a sudden they do the hyperventilating to cry to go on TV," suggesting that parents of children killed at Sandy Hook were acting.35
226. A reasonable person would understand these statements to assert that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, and that the plaintiff fabricated the death of his wife.
227. On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
228. of people.
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/ 11/17/trump-ally-alex-jones-doubles-down-sandy-hook-conspiracy-theories/214524





November 18, 2016
229. On November 18, 2016, Jones broadcast a video now advertised on YouTube under the title, "Alex Jones Final Statement on Sandy Hook."
230. During that video, Jones stated, “I want to reach out to my listeners as well and just clarify where I stand on the reported tragedy at Sandy Hook that took place at that elementary school."
231. He continued: “For the last three or four years, it's been mainstream media's number-one attack against me to say that I said there was never anyone that actually died there. I've hosted debates against both sides, and I've been criticized by both sides people that say that no one died there and people who say that the official story is exactly as we've been told. And I've always said that I'm not sure about what really happened, that there's a lot of anomalies and there has been a cover-up of whatever did happen there.”
232. He stated: “There's a few clips Hillary used in her campaign of me out of context saying I can see how people that look at all this evidence say no kids died there and this whole thing is a giant hoax, but at the same time there is some evidence that people died there. They take that out of context and misrepresent it. That's why they're the deceptive corporate media. But for those who do have an attention span for, say, 10 minutes or so, I will present to you the questions. And I'm going to be quite frank, I don't know what really happened. I know there are real mass shootings. I know people lose children. I'm a father. It hurts my heart. So I don't know what the truth is. All I know is the official story of Sandy Hook has more holes in it than Swiss cheese."
233. Jones rehearsed several of his most commonly employed arguments that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged, including that Anderson Cooper was standing in front of “a blue screen or a green screen,” that video was “looped," and that “one of the reported fathers of the victims . . . [was] doing classic acting training."
234. In closing, Jones said, “This is a tragedy. I wish it never would have happened. But quite frankly, I wish that the official story was true because that's a lot less scary than them staging something like this. But when you think about how they staged (weapons of mass destruction] to kill million Iraqis, when you think about all the other hoaxes, all the other lies, all the other rigging, and the way they're freaking out about it and trying to cover up every level of it, it just makes me ask what really happened there?"
235. The clear implication of these statements is that the accepted account of Sandy Hook—that the plaintiff lost his wife in the shooting—is false, and that the plaintiff has fabricated his wife's death.
236. On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions,


March 8, 2017
250. On the March 8, 2017 edition of The Alex Jones Show, Jones hosted Eddie Bravo.
251. During the interview, Bravo stated, “Dr. Steve Pieczenik, and you got some heat for this, this is kind of changing the subject a little bit. Dr. Steve Pieczenik, on your show, said that no kids died at Sandy Hook, that it was a homeland security drill that they passed off as “real”
252. Jones stated, “He says that. And I've been hit really hard with it. I can't prove it one way or the other. I know Anderson Cooper is standing up there and turns and his whole nose disappears. I work in TV, I know what a blue screen is, bro."
253. A reasonable person would understand Jones and Bravo to have been stating that the Sandy Hook massacre was faked, and that the plaintiff participated in a fraud that was based on lying about the death of his wife.
254. On information and belief, this episode was also broadcast through Jones's radio affiliates.
The audience for this broadcast has included hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
255. of people.

Alex Jones's June 18, 2017 Counter-Programming
311. Meanwhile, as the interview played on NBC, Jones himself was broadcasting a live play-by-play video commentary on Infowars.
312. The Sandy Hook segment of the NBC interview began with a Megyn Kelly voiceover describing Jones's statements that Sandy Hook was a hoax. As the voiceover played, Jones said, “Babies in the incubators.”
313. As evidenced by statements recounted previously in this complaint, “babies in the incubators" is a well-established Alex Jones metonym for a staged event.
314. This statement is properly interpreted as a reiteration and reaffirmation of Jones's previous statements that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged and that no children died there.
315. Later, as his statement that he “looked at all the angles of Newtown" in the NBC interview played in the background, Jones said, “I said I thought it happened before they were picked up. They never showed my final analysis.”
316. This statement appears to be an admission that Jones never actually believed that Sandy Hook was a hoax, even as he maintained unequivocally that it was.
317. On information and belief, these statements were also broadcast on Alex Jones's radio affiliates.
318. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people heard these statements.


The Sandy Hook lies were not the only one perpetrated by Alex Jones over this radio station. Jones admits to broadcasting false information in seven radio broadcasts about yet another conspiracy which resulted in violence:

46. On November 27, 2016, for instance, Jones spoke at length about “Pizzagate,” a baseless conspiracy theory alleging that Democratic operatives were running a child-sex ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant. He urged his followers to “investigate” the matter.
47. “You have to go investigate it for yourself," he told them. “But I will warn you, this story that's been the biggest thing on the internet for several weeks, Pizzagate as it's called, is a rabbit hole that is horrifying to go down . . . . Something's going on. Something's being covered up. This needs to be investigated.”
48. Jones's followers came running to his call, as he knew they would.
49. The pizzeria received hundreds of threats. Its owner told The New York Times, “[W]e've come under constant assault. I've done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized.”
50. The owner and staff, along with some of their families, were harassed on social media websites. The owner received death threats. Even musical groups that had performed at the pizzeria and nearby businesses were harassed.
51. On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a self-described Alex Jones follower, drove from Salisbury, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., and fired three rounds into the pizzeria with an AR-15-style rifle.
Welch told police that his objective was to "self-investigate” the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In fact, just days before embarking on his violent “self-investigation,” Welch urged a friend to watch "PIZZAGATE: The Bigger Picture," an Infowars video.
53. Shortly thereafter, Jones removed his November 27, 2016 video and scrubbed references to his advocacy of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
54. Similarly, many of the persons who have directly harassed or abused Sandy Hook families have been motivated by Jones's urging that his listeners “investigate."

­­­­­­­­­­­­
Again, I respectfully ask the FCC and the licensee of this station to enforce the FCC’s Hoax Rule which requires this conspiracy program to be clearly labeled as “fiction” so listeners will know Jones is not dealing in fact.

If the FCC and/or the licensee does not act, as a member of this community, I will object to the license renewal of this radio station.

Sincerely,



_____________________________________________________________________________________
(signature)

___________________________________________________________________________________________________
(printed name)

________________________________________________________________________
(address)


_________________________________________________________________________
(city, state, zip)