Bloomberg News was outraged that a conservative news host expressed concern about alleged presidential election problems. The organization, owned by liberal billionaire Michael Bloomberg, came out against “expressing views.”
Or at least ones it disagreed with.
“On Monday, cable outlet One America News Network posted two videos to its YouTube account titled ‘Trump won,’” Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The article went on to suggest that these videos are “falsely,” claiming that “U.S. President Donald Trump was re-elected and that the vote was marred by fraud.” Bloombeg’s objection was that YouTube merely “added a label noting that the Associated Press called the election for Joe Biden” rather than “block[ing] or remov[ing] the content.”
One America News Network (OAN) produced two videos from Weekly Briefing host Christina Bobb on Monday Nov. 9 using the phrase “Trump won” in the title. Each discussed ballot problems ranging from accusing Democrats of making a play to “steal the presidency” via ballot fraud to claiming news organizations called election results early to “breathe life into the Biden campaign.”
Bloomberg explained the unique political loophole that enables these videos:
A few months ago, YouTube released a detailed policy prohibiting manipulated media and voter suppression, but left one gap: Expressing views on the election is OK. The result has been an onslaught of videos aiming to undermine the legitimacy of the election, according to online media and political researchers.
“‘YouTube saw the inevitable writing on the wall that its platform would be used to spread false claims of election victory and it shrugged,’” Harvard Law School Evelyn Douek lamented in Bloomberg’s article.
YouTube spokesman Farshad Shadloo defended the platform’s policy by explaining: “Our systems are generally working as intended and we are surfacing news organizations prominently in search results and recommendations.” Shadloo later added: “The vast majority of elections-related queries are surfacing authoritative sources.”
Liberal media critiques aside, YouTube, a sister company to Google, has cracked down repeatedly on conservative speech in the past few years.
YouTube has removed more than 300 ads from Trump’s reelection campaign over the summer of 2019 alone.
YouTube removed a video from The Heritage Foundation’s YouTube channel, citing its “hate speech policy,” according to The Federalist. Walt Heyer, who expressed regret for his own transgender years during a panel at the “Summit on Protecting Children from Sexualization,” doubled down after being censored. Heyer explained in a video responding to the censorship: “I said that children suffering from gender dysphoria should not be encouraged to try experimental hormones in surgery, and I stand by that statement.”
YouTube censored White House presidential advisor and Dr. Scott Atlas, M.D, for going against the World Health Organization’s narrative in September. “YouTube has yanked down a video produced by Stanford University's Hoover Institute featuring public health expert Dr. Scott Atlas, M.D., because it ‘contradicts the World Health Organization [WHO] or local health authorities' medical information about COVID-19.’” The Blaze reported in a September 14 article. While Atlas is far from the first casualty of Big Tech liberals’ scorched earth campaign to squelch contradicting opinions about the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact they are coming after a respected doctor is definitely an acceleration.
According to a 950-page leak from Google whistleblower Zachary Vorhies, YouTube also has a “Twiddler” system for ranking search results in order to bury content the platform’s consider controversial.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Google at 1-650-253-0000 and demand that the platform provide transparency: Companies need to design open systems so that they can be held accountable, while giving weight to privacy concerns. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
