Radio Host Alex Jones promotes dangerous fiction. Stations should say so.

originally published in the Sacramento Bee 

In this Monday, April 17, 2017 photo, “Infowars” host Alex Jones, right, arrives at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas. Jones, the right-wing radio host and conspiracy theorist, is a performance artist whose true personality is nothing like his on-air persona, according to a lawyer defending the “Infowars” broadcaster in a child custody battle. (Tamir Kalifa/Austin American-Statesman via AP)


Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article222742110.html#storylink=cpy

 In this Monday, April 17, 2017 photo, “Infowars” host Alex Jones, right, arrives at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas. Jones, the right-wing radio host and conspiracy theorist, is a performance artist whose true personality is nothing like his on-air persona, according to a lawyer defending the “Infowars” broadcaster in a child custody battle. (Tamir Kalifa/Austin American-Statesman via AP) AP


Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article222742110.html#storylink=cpy

Even California’s wildfires have been wrapped into radio host Alex Jones’ dangerous conspiracy theories.

In a post on Jones’ Infowars website last year, a man identified as a fire captain suggested only an energy weapon could have caused Northern California’s October 2017 fires.

This summer, Forrest Clark, a mentally troubled Jones fan who had shared a theory on social media that California wildfires were part of an international conspiracy, was charged with starting the Holy Fire.

“It’s all going to burn like you planned,” he wrote in a text to a volunteer fire chief before allegedly starting the fire, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Jones occupies a central position in the realm of conspiracy, and has rightly been removed from major social media platforms for harassment, glorification of violence and child endangerment. But radio stations around the country still broadcast the dangerous falsehoods he promotes on “The Alex Jones Show,” which are contributing to real-world terror.

He told radio listeners nationwide that the Sandy Hook school shooting never happened.