YouTube Censorship

by Kerby Anderson, Point of View: In this free society we take for granted that we can use Google to find information and can go to YouTube to watch videos. People in other countries are not so fortunate. China is a prime example. The Chinese government has closed off media access to information about Tibet. Both Google News and YouTube (both owned by Google) have had their sites blocked from the Internet in China. Another example is Pakistan. In that country YouTube has been censored. The government took down YouTube videos because it believed that some of the videos were blasphemous. And in Myanmar, the government blocked the entire Internet during a period of unrest.

In light of these actions against YouTube, you might think that they would be against censorship. That unfortunately has not been the case. There is a growing list of examples of YouTube censorship against pro-life groups. The current case in the news was the decision by YouTube to block the pro-life post from the Kansas Coalition for Life. That video detailed Senator Obama's voting record on the issue of partial-birth abortion. They said that the video violated its "community guideline" concerning such content even though other videos dealing with the topic of abortion remain. Perhaps the real reason had to do with the fact that the video mentioned Senator Obama.

Another example of YouTube censorship is some of the videos produced by Lila Rose. She is the UCLA student who taped conversations with Planned Parenthood workers. When I met with her for an interview recently, she told me that YouTube removed her videos of phone recordings of Planned Parenthood employees who agreed to process donations from a caller with a racist agenda. Other pro-life groups like American Life League and the Population Research Institute have also had videos removed but later restored. I find it a bit ironic that YouTube finds itself censored in China while pro-life groups find themselves censored by YouTube in America. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.
See also: A Slippery Slope of Censorship at YouTube (The NY Times)
YouTube blocked video mocking Clinton administration

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