Samuel Case, FISM News
YouTube has temporarily suspended The Hill’s entire account for violating the site’s “elections misinformation policies.” The channel has been suspended for seven days after publishing two videos in which former President Donald Trump claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
“The first video in question, which was not aired as part of Rising, was raw footage of Trump’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 26, during which he made false claims about the election,” Robby Soave, co-host of The Hill’s morning show “Rising” and senior editor at Reason, wrote.
“The second video contained a clip of Fox News host Laura Ingraham interviewing Trump, who claimed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is only happening because of a rigged election.”
Our Hill colleagues also posted a raw video of Trump's speech to CPAC, without comment or rebuttal. We know the 2020 election was neither stolen nor rigged and look forward to returning to our channel soon. We appreciate your support!
— Rising (@HillTVLive) March 3, 2022
Soave said YouTube’s election misinformation policy “effectively outlaws straight news reporting.”
“I understood that the platform would punish content creators who made false statements about the election,” Soave said. “I had no idea that YouTube would punish news channels for reporting the news.”
Likewise, Ryan Grim, “Rising” co-host and The Intercept’s D.C. Bureau Chief, attacked YouTube’s policies as reflecting “a broad problem with Big Tech’s approach to censorship: It has nothing but contempt for the viewer.”
Long before I co-hosted “Rising,” I found The Hill’s prolific posting of speeches and press conferences immensely useful. That YouTube wants to end that in order to spare fragile minds from the direct words of politicians is a tragedy for the public, for journalism, and for future historians.
YouTube’s “elections misinformation policies” bans “content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of select past national elections, after final election results are officially certified.”
In 2021 YouTube removed Trump’s CPAC speech and flagged FISM’s YouTube channel for violating the platform’s “misinformation policies.”