House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) grilled Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai for allegedly corrupting his YouTube platform to censor former President Donald Trump’s Oct. 25 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience.
Jordan condemned YouTube for its role in censoring the episode which has accumulated over 42 million views as of Friday. In a Wednesday letter, Jordan called for prompt answers from Alphabet: "We write to seek an immediate briefing on (1) YouTube’s decision to censor Joe Rogan’s interview with President Trump; and (2) Google Search’s elevation of material critical of the interview."
Jordan’s requests came after the New York Post reported on Monday that a “search on YouTube using the terms ‘Joe Rogan Trump’ or ‘Joe Rogan Donald Trump’ did not bring up Friday’s three-hour sit-down at the top of the list.” The Post also noted that the interview was absent from YouTube’s trending page on Monday.
Among the first to call out Google for censoring the podcast was Alexandros Marinos, an X user boasting over 61k followers. Marinos used a screen-recorded video to expose YouTube's apparent censorship, garnering over 16.5 million views on X.
YouTube does not return the link to the full Joe Rogan/Trump interview no matter how I try to search for it.
— Alexandros Marinos 🏴☠️ (@alexandrosM) October 28, 2024
There is no sensible explanation for this, and if deliberate, Google is overtly interfering with the elections.@YouTube this needs fixed immediately. pic.twitter.com/4xt0V9V1EF
Instead of the full episode popping up in the search results, researchers found YouTube featured small clips of the nearly three-hour-long episode. Can Google make it any more obvious that they were trying to censor Rogan’s most-viewed episode of the year?
Rogan himself commented Wednesday, “There's no way it was a mistake, that's too convenient." Rogan even went so far as to say, “This is the internet. This is 2024. People are going to realize what you're doing if you try to make it so that something can't come up in a search engine because it's too popular.”
Jordan continued by saying that he found the instance very troubling, especially in the few days prior to an election where free speech needs to be observed. In the letter, he scolded Alphabet saying that "Americans deserve access to political speech, especially in the closing weeks before an election."
To cap off the letter, Jordan threatened Alphabet with a measurable amount of oversight on the situation if not briefed by Nov. 13—just a week after Election Day.
With just under a week to go before Election Day, it is apparent that lawmakers like Jordan are keen on ensuring that YouTube does not censor for the purpose of election interference. After all, election interference by Alphabet’s Google has become a commonality in the past few election cycles as noted in the Media Research Center’s “41 Times Google Has Interfered in US Elections Since 2008.”
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand government agencies and Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
