Google-Owned YouTube Backtracks on Blacklisting UK Lockdown-Sceptic talkRADIO

JHB TR
Twitter / JuliaHB1
Oliver JJ Lane

Google-owned video platform YouTube reinstated the account of Rupert Murdoch-owned British radio station talkRADIO, hours after it faced widespread media attention and accusations of censorship.

The tech giant took down the YouTube channel for Britain’s oldest commercial talk radio station — talkRADIO, part of the talkSPORT network — in the early hours of Tuesday morning, prompting a wave of criticism, and even saw a British government minister appearing on the station hours after the ban where he stated the government’s commitment to a free press and against censorship. As Breitbart London reported on Tuesday night, the decision was reversed some 19 hours after the initial takedown.

TalkRADIO published YouTube’s statement, when the Google-owned video site stated that while, in their opinion, the broadcaster had broken their rules on coronavirus reporting, nevertheless they were going to reverse the decision, citing an exemption for videos with “educational, documentary, scientific or artistic purpose”.

YouTube said:

talkRADIO’s YouTube channel was briefly suspended but upon further review, has now been reinstated.

We quickly remove flagged content that violate out Community Guidelines, including COVID-19 content that explicitly contradict expert concensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organisation.

We make exceptions for material posted with an educational, documentary, scientific or artistic purpose, as was deemed in this case.

Prior to the reinstatement, talkRADIO had released their own statement in which they emphasised the fact that as a live-broadcast UK radio station they were bound to, and obeyed, the UK’s broadcasting code as enforced by the government’s Ofcom regulator. In effect, talkRADIO said, despite no UK laws having been broken, YouTube nevertheless decided to act against them unilaterally. They said, in a statement reported by The Guardian:

talkRadio is an Ofcom-licensed and regulated broadcaster and has robust editorial controls in place, taking care to balance debate.

We regularly interrogate government data and we have controls in place, use verifiable sources and give space to a careful selection of voices and opinions.

Julia Hartley-Brewer, one of talkRADIO’s star presenters, issued a thorough denial on air on Tuesday that the network had ever broken YouTube’s coronavirus rules, remarking: “No one on talkRADIO has said ANY of those things. We simply challenge the evidence that lockdowns are a proportionate response to the Covid virus. It’s called free speech.”

While Google’s blacklisting of the British radio station generated headlines and the obliquely-worded criticism of government minister Michael Gove, UK daily newspaper the i — formerly a sister-paper to the now-defunct Independent newspaper, turned news website — reports that the decision was overturned after pressure from talkRADIO’s ultimate owner Rupert Murdoch. According to the paper’s claimed exclusive, Murdoch intervened personally, with his News UK company calling Google’s move “a dangerous precedent… censorship of free speech and legitimate national debate”.

Others criticised Google’s blacklisting in similar terms. As Breitbart London reported on Tuesday:

Civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch said that the move by YouTube was a “bold censorship move that would make China proud,” adding that it “is an assault on free expression [and] must be overturned.”

Australian writer and lawyer Helen Dale said: “Everyone laughed when it was wingnuts like Alex Jones getting banned. Now we’re seeing it done to perfectly boring, Ofcom-regulated UK talkRADIO. Who’s next? LBC? They’re a bit ‘edgy’. YouTube are a menace.”

“If YouTube has an editorial policy, then it should be treated as a publisher in law. At the moment it is not, while the BBC, Times, LBC, Speccie, Grauniad and, yes, talkRADIO all are. I realise this would kill social media stone dead, but that would be no bad thing,” she added.

The deputy editor at the British libertarian magazine Spiked, Tom Slater described the move by YouTube as “one of the most chilling examples of Big Tech censorship yet.”

Slater noted that talkRADIO is a “mainstream radio station” which interviews members of the government every day.

“We essentially have Silicon Valley oligarchs deciding the fate of British radio stations on the basis of their editorial decisions. Government needs to respond to this,” he demanded.

Read more at Breitbart London

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