YouTube defends conservative content creators against Media Matters-fueled New York Times hit piece on 'election misinformation'

The New York Times' Nico Grant reached out to prominent YouTubers earlier this week to inquire about the "election misinformation" beleaguered far-left media watchdog Media Matters had claimed to have found in their videos. Grant also reached out to YouTube for his article. The platform said that "none of the 286 videos violated its community guidelines." YouTube further told The Times that "what's important to use is that we're representing a broad spectrum of views."

Grant asked Tucker Carlson, Tim Pool, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Benny Johnson, and the Babylon Bee, among others about those videos before digging into their relationship with YouTube, asking "Are you a member of the YouTube Partner Program? If so, how frequently does YouTube demonetize your videos? Has YouTube sent you messages, emails or notices in the last year that your content contains misinformation?" When reached for comment, most of those commentators responded with some variation on "f*ck you" and posted the correspondence on X.

YouTube had once had restrictions against so-called election misinformation but those restrictions were lifted. Others have not been. Grant blasted YouTube for what he said was their decision to "stop fighting the most persistent strain of election misinformation in the United States: the falsehood that President Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump."

And he boosted Media Matters, which is a media "watchdog" that is currently facing lawsuits both from Elon Musk's X and from the state of Missouri. The New York Times claims that Media Matters "monitors information from conservative sources" and "examined the consequences" of YouTube's cessation of election information censorship. Grant admits that Media Matters "is a partisan organization," but said that The Times "independently verified the research."

The Times went after not only the YouTubers, but the platform, saying that "YouTube generated revenue from more than a third of those videos by placing ads before or during them." Those commentators included Rudy Giuliani, Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Kash Patel, and others.

With their refusal to remove the videos, The Times posits that YouTube, "in this presidential contest," has "acted as a megaphone for conspiracy theories." 

"The commentators used false narratives about 2020 as a foundation for elaborate claims that the 2024 presidential contest was also rigged — all while YouTube made money from them," The Times' said. Three of the videos flagged by Media Matters have been removed by YouTube.

Though YouTube hasn't found any issue with the videos, or violations of their terms of service, The Times leaned on Media Matters' analysis, quoting a research director who said "YouTube is allowing these right-wing accounts and channels to undermine the 2024 results."

Some of those instances included commentators saying that the Justice Department was "rigged" against Trump after some 91 charges were leveled against him in four criminal cases across federal and state courts. Another claim by The Times was that it was wrong to say "they're cheating" when Michigan refused to remove RFK Jr.'s name from their ballots after he requested it be pulled.

Another claim Grant had an issue with was when commentators stated that the lawfare against Trump was an effort to "hamper his electoral prospects." Many top Democrats insisted that Trump would be in jail, not on the ballot, and both district attorneys prosecuting Trump in Atlanta and New York ran their campaigns for office on the promise of going after Trump.

But YouTube feels they have been doing their due diligence. A spokesperson for the platform said that they routinely remove content that violates their services, specifically on election interference or threats. "We have significant investment in this area in terms of making sure that first and foremost we’re raising authoritative content, and then we are removing or reducing things that might represent misinformation," YouTube told The Times.

Defending content creators was not always the party line at YouTube, which has had restrictions on creators discussing Covid, Covid vaccines, election integrity, and other hot-button issues. 

ABC recently allowed election disinformation to air on their platform when late night host Jimmy Kimmel joked that Trump voters should cast their votes "late," going as far as to say they should cast their votes after Election Day had passed. A memester who posted a similar joke to then-Twitter in 2016 was prosecuted by the Biden-Harris administration and sentenced to 7 months in prison.