YouTube removes raw footage of Capitol riot by independent journalist, demonetizes channel

YouTube has removed raw Jan. 6 footage from an independent journalist, one of the country's leading chroniclers of political demonstrations, who documented the Capitol Hill riot. Then the platform demonetized his entire channel because of his alleged "harmful content."

News2Share co-founder Ford Fischer uploaded video from former President Donald Trump's speech and the crowd's reaction before rioters stormed the Capitol building. For adversaries on the political left, this correlation that implies causation signals the key moment in the impeachment complaint against Trump.

YouTube alleged that Fischer produces "[c]ontent that focuses on controversial issues and that is harmful to viewers." Fischer has implored ways he can fix the ongoing conflict and resolve the disputed issue.

YouTube told Fischer that "content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome" of the 2020 presidential election is not allowed on the site.

It was unclear if YouTube's algorithm flagged his content by mistake in the first place, but then company the claimed on Twitter that Fischer's video "didn't include countervailing views or sufficient context of the claims made in the footage."

"As videos can be embedded across the web, we only allow this content to remain on the platform if there's appropriate context within the video itself," YouTube tweeted in response. Fischer lambasted the company's "punish first and ask why later" practice.

However, that policy does not seem to apply against corporate news outlets, such as NBCNews and the Telegraph, that have uploaded the president's speech in full without any additional reporting or context.

Aligned with Big Tech's crackdown on conservative content, the Google-owned company's partisan efforts to censor right-wing creators is based on the noble premise that misinformation harms good-faith journalism.

Fischer told Forbes that he was baffled and angry that YouTube can't tell the difference between raw footage meant to document the historical event and conspiracy theorists promoting election disinformation.

"I believe in YouTube's core principles. I hope you still do," Fischer tagged the company's official Twitter account. "Let's solve it together. YouTube is about having a voice. I intend to keep using mine."

Fischer accused of YouTube of "not only betraying its content creators and viewers by making choices to demonetize and delete content of independent content creators," but the platform is "betraying their shareholders."

"YouTube will lose money if they continue down this path," Fischer advised.

On Twitter, Fischer maintained that his video, which showed the crowd chanting "fight for Trump" before the attack, is crucial for the public to see as Trump will stand trial in the Senate over whether he incited the riot.

Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy fellow Jay Ulfelder wrote in an email to YouTube that Fischer's videos also "serve as crucial archival material for future scholars looking to get a better sense of what happened than our data or other news sources can provide."

The lead scholar went on to "attest the value" of Fischer's footage to nonpartisan research on protest activity in the United States, pointing to his lab's multi-year, multi-university Crowd Counting Consortium that creates related open-source data for scholars and journalists.

Fischer's material is "an invaluable resource" for the NonViolent Action Lab program director's work and provides unrivaled "on-the-scene detail," Ulfelder argued, citing the accuracy of his content that helps to "characterize the nature of the event" such as the numbers of participants, the rationale behind actions, and their interactions with law enforcement. Thus, impeding News2Share's videos also hinders intelligence on "one of the most concerns of our time."

National extremism correspondent Will Carless also defended Fischer, proclaiming that his videos have been used by other journalists "countless times to analyze and understand hectic and dangerous conflicts."

"@YouTube needs to get its act together and stop deplatformjng [sic] legitimate journalists," Carless volleyed.

This isn't the first time YouTube has taken action against Fischer. In 2019, Fischer's account was demonetized after two of his videos were removed when the site moved to police Holocaust denialism.

The first upload showed pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters shouting down an involved Holocaust denier at that year's American Israel Public Affair Committee conference. The other post published raw footage of neo-Nazi Mike Peinovich Enoch's speech. Fischer was not promoting the views shown, but it still took seven months for YouTube to re-monetize his channel.