YouTube, the Google-owned video streaming platform, rebuffed pressure from The New York Times and The Washington Post to silence some prominent right-leaning and free-speech voices just days before the 2024 presidential election.
On Thursday, The Times and The Post published separate reports accusing several podcast hosts, news anchors and legal scholars of spreading so-called election-related misinformation on platforms such as YouTube. But, to the detriment of the left, a YouTube spokesperson affirmed that the platform would not censor the videos, claiming it values a range of opinions.
“The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial, is an important value — especially in the midst of election season,” YouTube told both The Times and The Post, shocking many as the platform has had a reputation for censoring speech that the left disagrees with.
Not deserving of being called a free speech bastion by any means, the platform still removed three of the videos targeted and temporarily slapped an informational banner on 21 of them, most of which were later removed, according to The Times.
While YouTube's refusal to fully cave to censorship pressure from The Times and The Post is a welcome sign, it doesn't excuse the platform's ongoing censorship. Data from MRC Free Speech America’s exclusive CensorTrack shows that YouTube has censored speech no fewer than 534 times, and that’s just scratching the surface.
YouTube’s response came after the targeted individuals blasted The Times for reaching out to them for comments to be featured on the infamous report, which exclusively relied on data from a discredited, radical leftist group. The Post did not use the discredited leftist group for its report.
The information that The Times and The Post relied upon singled out 286 videos across 30 channels, featuring some of the biggest and most influential hosts like Tucker Carlson, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Donald Trump Jr., Fox News hosts Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters and Mark Levin and The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles. YouTube said it reviewed eight of the 286 videos and that they did not run afoul of the company’s community guidelines.
Legal voices were also targeted, including Tom Fitton, Stephen Miller, Mike Davis, Harmeet Dhillon, Kash Patel and Kimberly Guilfoyle, among others. Many of these figures rebuked The Times for blindly echoing the radical anti-free speech talking points it was fed, with Shapiro taking the lead.
Shapiro accused The Times of relying on a “radical Left-wing organization whose sole purpose is destroying conservative media … in order to pressure YouTube to demonetize and penalize any and all conservatives ONE WEEK FROM THE ELECTION.”
In a separate report, The Post accused Shapiro, Johnson, and podcasters Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk of “preemptively casting doubt on the integrity of the 2024 election.”
Similar to The Times, The Post also contacted YouTube and other podcast platforms, requesting comments about the videos it deemed misinformation. However, YouTube similarly dismissed their request, reiterating to The Post the same statement it had provided to The Times.
YouTube’s subdued approach to censorship came after the Media Research Center and members of the MRC-led Free Speech Alliance warned Big Tech giants against interfering in the presidential election by censoring online speech.
“We know that governments across the world are pressuring tech firms to interfere in the 2024 elections just as so many of you did in 2020,” FSA members wrote in August 2024. “Now is the time for you to affirm that you will not bow to this coercion and to reaffirm your commitment to providing fair and even-handed service to your customers.”
Several prominent free speech leaders signed the letter, including MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell and Article III Project President Mike Davis, the latter of whom was also targeted in The Times’s one-sided report. Other members of the Free Speech Alliance that were targeted were The Claremont Institute, through its senior fellow Jeremy Carl; The Heritage Foundation, through its senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky; and Human Events, through its senior editor Jack Posobiec.
Former President Donald Trump has also weighed in, warning Google that any interference in the upcoming November election would come with dire consequences if he is elected president. His admonishment came after MRC released several bombshell studies showing that Google Search users had to wade through a bevy of leftist media outlet content before finding the Trump campaign’s website.
"It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in September.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
