Bournbrook podcast censored
The latest episode of our weekly podcast series, The Week in Review, has been censored by YouTube. Really, we are amazed it took them this long to get to us!
The video platform, run by internet giant Google, got in touch with our team yesterday to say we had violated their guidelines relating to content which touches on Covid.
Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our medical-misinformation policy. We've removed the following content from YouTube: Video: Standing on the Precipice – The Week in Review (ep 31) …
YouTube doesn't allow claims about Covid vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organisation.
Neither myself, S D Wickett nor Luke Perry (the three hosts of the show) can work out what is so special about this episode to warrant it being banned. It’s one of our tamest discussions, we agree. Maybe the others will be binned soon, too!
As Sam has pointed out, We don't even talk about the efficacy of the vaccine in the episode – just about the culture of pressure around it. And Guy Denton, our US Editor, has a rather amusing point: ‘I’m surprised they banned that one when you have a video titled “Conspiracy Theorists Vindicated”.’
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The good news here is that you can still listen to the episode (for now) on Spotify, here or below.
The bad news is that this likely won’t be the first act of censorship made against us (especially, again, given the tame nature of the discussion in this particular recording) and that we will have to find new, more safe ways of publishing our content online.
This is partly why I love print as a medium. Those who really dislike our work could burn our magazines, but we’ll just print more. And there will surely always be at least one printing company willing to work with us (we’re not that mad, are we?). If not, we could print them ourselves.
But, of course, we must still operate online – how else would anyone come to know about us in today’s world?
And fine, we could (and probably will) release all of our podcasts on alternative platforms. But these would be listened to by much smaller numbers of people. Such is the power of the large tech companies.
Either way, we will be spending the next few days working out how we can best put our content out into the world and will report back soon.
