YouTube's Double Standard On Protests

Photo of K. Daniel Glover.

YouTube is promoting as its "citizen news report of the day" a video of an alleged attack on Greenpeace activists at a coal plant in Poland. There are two problems with the news judgment behind this video selection.

First, both the initial report on the video and YouTube's description of it overstate what actually happened. Watch the video for yourself and see. Aside from some unjustifiable shoving, kicking of snow and grabbing of signs, there is no attack.

In one instance, the pushing is to get protesters out of the way of an oncoming bulldozer. Another clip appears to show a coal miner helping up a protester who fell, and the Greenpeace activists eventually are allowed to display their "Quit Coal" banners without interference -- presumably on private property where they had no right to be.

But the bigger problem with the news judgment in this case is the blatant double standard at work. Why is YouTube helping to publicize an obscure, pro-environmental protest in Poland while ignoring citizen journalism reports of recent bad behavior by protesters that are far more noteworthy and much closer to home?

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Gay activists have wreaked havoc during a church service, threatened Armageddon against the Mormon church and forced Christians out of a gay neighborhood in San Franciso under a police escort. Footage of all of those incidents, including some by citizen journalists, is on YouTube but has been ignored even though gay outrage over California's Nov. 4 vote for traditional marriage has been big news.

Instead of exposing its viewers to the hostility of gays toward religious people, YouTube has promoted a more positive message about gays standing up for their supposed civil rights. Since the election, two such videos have been promoted on the YouTube blog.

One of them portrays gay marriage proponent and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom "as a fighter for this cause, someone who is out in front of the media campaigning on the issue." The other promotes a citizen journalist's report about Nepal's Supreme Court upholding gay marriage.

YouTube also featured both videos on the site's news and politics section. And just after the election, YouTube editors promoted two other videos in favor of gay rights, one that cast protests in a positive light and another that features a Harvard University professor waxing eloquent about justice and fairness in marriage.

If you want to get the other side of the story -- the side being told at Eyeblast.tv and EightHate.com -- you'll need the patience of a man looking for a needle in a haystack to find it at YouTube.

That's because the longer it is online, the more YouTube is looking like just a new-media arm of the liberally biased media of old we know all too well.

Cross-posted at Video Done Right

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Youtube is OWNED by google, a private company

And yes it is becoming harder to find stuff in their site.

TY has a new listing to make it even harder to find stuff , videos that i have taged as a favorites are now listed as  "private video"

One time when TY banned videos they HAD the courtesy, of informing you, now it's just POOF like they were never there.

However the good news is that lots of folk keep posting again and again...it's a war..

DEMOCRAT

Aclu</

youtube has been

decidedly listing to the left for some time now.  Just read up on how much trouble NakedEmporerNews and TheMouthPeace had with their videos.  Fortunately people can basically virally infect youtube and still get the news out there but I think viewcounts were regularly meddled with, and items that should have been front page ended up stuck mid-field on page 2...sometimes things just 'dissapeared'.

 

member of the Conservative Independant Witness Protection Program since Nov. 5, 2008

I agree...Youtube is

I agree...Youtube is becoming a full-force team joining the rest of the leftist msm and dem party...arm in arm, the more the merrier with their constant agenda for complete power.

I just don't know what can be done about it for the most part...anymore than the msm..they just keep on ticking, no matter what. 

"America isn't the problem...America is the solution." ~ Rush Limbaugh

the answer is simple, we

the answer is simple, we need to make our own "You Tube"

We have our own YouTube already

That would be Eyeblast.tv, where I'm the executive producer and constantly on the lookout for quality content from conservatives to promote on the site. So please join our community and upload yours. You also can create groups just like on Facebook.

Our goal is to make Eyeblast not only a conservative-friendly alternative to YouTube but a broader interactive, multimedia community for the movement, with all of the tools we need to share our values and ideals.

Come check us out, spread the word and send me your ideas on how to improve the site. We're working on a redesign now.

K. Daniel Glover is the executive producer of the Media Research Center's EyeBlast.tv.

It will only get worse as

It will only get worse as the new admin gives them more power to discriminate and factionalize video's they don't feel are appropriate.

 

 

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you"