YouTube Suspends Popular News Channel Simply For Playing Clip Of Donald Trump Denying Election Results
YouTube suspended popular news channel The Hill for playing a clip of former President Donald Trump claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
YouTube suspended The Hill’s channel due to violating its policies after its morning show, “Rising,” posted two clips of Trump denying the validity of the results of the election, Rising’s Twitter account said Thursday. The Hill’s channel is unable to upload new videos for seven days, although its older videos can still be accessed.
“We covered former President Trump’s remarks about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the account said. “In a soundbite, he repeated his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Our discussion focused on what Trump said about Putin and did not explicitly rebut claims of election fraud.”
The content in question featured Trump speaking with Fox News host Laura Ingraham and attributing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the stolen presidential election, as well as raw footage of Trump continuing to deny the validity of the election results during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
“It’s hard to understand how the cause of fighting misinformation could be well-served by punishing news channels that educate viewers about what their political leaders are saying,” Rising host Robby Soave told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
When reached for comment, YouTube policy communications manager Ivy Choi confirmed that the channel had been suspended for posting content in violation of YouTube’s policies.
“We removed content from and issued a strike to this channel for violating our election integrity policy, and as a result, this channel is suspended from publishing new videos or livestreams for seven days,” Choi told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We do allow for content with sufficient educational, documentary, scientific or artistic context, which the removed content did not contain.”
Soave addressed the suspension in an article for Reason, arguing that YouTube’s expansive election integrity policy “effectively outlaws straight news reporting on YouTube.”
“It is one thing for YouTube to ban people who are making false claims,” Soave wrote. “It is quite another for YouTube to prohibit people from educating their viewers about the reality that the former president is still spreading these false claims.”
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