The Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a conservative news broadcaster, received a two-week suspension from YouTube because it covered President Donald Trump’s speech at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
The video nearly accumulated 4 million views before being censored by the Google-owned platform.
The official Twitter account of RSBN reported the news.
“RSBN has been suspended from YouTube for two weeks because of the Trump #CPAC2021 speech, which violated their guidelines on election misinformation. The video was approaching 4 million views. They have also removed it from their platform.”
NEW: RSBN has been suspended from YouTube for two weeks because of the Trump #CPAC2021 speech, which violated their guidelines on election misinformation.
The video was approaching 4 million views. They have also removed it from their platform.
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) March 4, 2021
RSBN said that it could have avoided a two-week suspension had it added “countervailing viewspoints” to President Trump’s claims about election irregularities. In other words, it was only permissible to upload Trump’s speech if RSBN also criticized it.
“It’s worth noting that according to YouTube’s terms, our video of Trump’s CPAC speech would have been allowed to stay up had we provided “countervailing viewpoints”‘, said RSBN in a statement. “Essentially we would have had to go on air and say everything Trump just said about election fraud is not true.”
“We won’t censor President Trump or push back against things he says that, quite frankly, we agree with.”
Even if we believed that, we wouldn’t sell out like that and say it just to keep a video up.
We try to follow the rules. Don’t air certain things that we normally would—but we won’t censor President Trump or push back against things he says that, quite frankly, we agree with.
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) March 4, 2021
YouTube admitted that it censored RSBN over the video of Trump in a comment to Breitbart News.
“We enforce our Community Guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker or political leaning. In accordance with our established presidential election integrity policy, which prohibits content uploaded after the safe harbor deadline claiming widespread fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we removed this video from Right Side Broadcasting Network,” said a YouTube spokeswoman.
“Content featuring footage from CPAC 2021 that does not violate our policies or contains sufficient educational, documentary, scientific and artistic context is allowed.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
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