James O'Brien hits out at Eamonn Holmes after "idiotic" 5G comments
14 April 2020, 13:59
James O'Brien hits out at Eamonn Holmes' apology after "idiotic" 5G comments
James O'Brien picked apart Eamonn Holmes' apology after his "mad" and "utterly idiotic" comments on 5G and coronavirus.
James said he aims to "diffuse fake news" and "delusional conspiracy theories" like Eamonn Holmes' comments made on Monday on ITV's This Morning which received 419 complaints to Ofcom.
Mr Holmes cast doubt on reports which have refuted the myth that 5G causes coronavirus "when they don't know it's not true."
Holmes continued: "It's very easy to say it is not true because it suits the state narrative. That's all I would say, as someone with an inquiring mind."
James said, "If you are in any doubt at all about how important it is for responsible broadcasters... to give precisely no air or bandwidth whatsoever to such madness and dangerous absurdity that has already seen people setting fire to phone masts in this country, then yesterday's episode of This Morning would have absolutely driven the point home for you."
"The apology today is not good enough. Priti Patel is sorry if, Eamonn Holmes is sorry - well he didn't actually say sorry - he's clarified but added 'however people are rightly concerned and looking for answers'.
"That's not good enough. There's no however when you're describing utter idiocy."
Of Eamonn Holmes' statement, James said no one is "rightly concerned" of a link between 5G and coronavirus, using the example of constituencies without immigrants saying they had "valid concerns" about immigrants - "they're not valid if they aren't real."
"Nobody can be rightly concerned about links between 5G and coronavirus because there simply aren't any."
Eamonn Holmes said:
“I want to clarify some comments that some of you may have misinterpreted from me yesterday, around conspiracy theories and Coronavirus and this involved the roll out of 5G.
"Both Alice Beer and myself agreed in a discussion on this very programme on fake news that it is not true that there is no connection between the present national health emergency and 5G and to suggest otherwise would be wrong and indeed it could be possibly dangerous.
"Every theory relating to such a connection has been proven to be false and we would like to emphasise that.
"However, many people are rightly concerned and are looking for answers, and that’s simply what I was trying to impart yesterday but for the avoidance of any doubt I want to make it clear there’s no scientific evidence to substantiate any of those 5G theories.”
