YouTube Promotes CNN Lies and Hate Speech

Julian Assange is the first publisher in US history to be prosecuted for publishing classified material. In 2019, I asked CNN’s Chief Whitehouse Correspondent, Jim Acosta, what he thought of the historic case and its potential impact on the freedom of the press. Acosta dodged the question, and instead spoke about Russia and the 2016 election, even though the charges against Assange have absolutely nothing to do with either.

Such muddying of the truth is why viewers left cable news outlets like CNN for independent news on YouTube. But earlier this year, YouTube CEO Susan Wijcicki acknowledged the platform’s sketchy new policy of suppressing independent news and artificially boosting so-called “authoritative” news sources, like CNN.

You can see YouTube’s meddling in action by typing “jim acosta julian assange” into the search bar. None of the videos covering Acosta’s comments on Assange are in the top search results. Most of the results are CNN videos, and oddly, the top 20 results don’t include Acosta and Assange together in any way whatsoever.

The very top search result is a highly downvoted CNN video of the infamous liar, James Clapper, titled “Former intel chief reacts to Assange arrest”.

There is no mention of Acosta, and while Clapper briefly discusses Assange, the majority of the video isn’t about him. Because before the halfway point, the topic is changed to “Russians”, “spies”, and “election meddling”, which again, has absolutely nothing to do with the case against Julian Assange.

YouTube says its search results are based on data, including titles and thumbnails, yet this top search result makes no mention of Acosta and includes no image of either Acosta or Assange in the thumbnail—just Clapper.

YouTube’s Search and Discovery team says video rankings are based on “satisfaction signals” from viewers: “Do they like it or dislike it?". However, the performance of the highly promoted CNN video is extremely poor, with more dislikes than likes.

In contrast, a video by the Jimmy Dore Show titled, “Jim Acosta Destroyed Over Julian Assange At Newseum”, which actually does include Jim Acosta and comment thoroughly on Julian Assange, is ranked lower in search results, despite better performance metrics in every single category (view count, engagement, and rating).

So when viewers search for “Jim Acosta Julian Assange”, YouTube promotes a highly disliked video with no mention of Jim Acosta, that’s mostly not about Julian Assange, and features perhaps the least trustworthy man in America.

Clapper famously lied under oath to the U.S. Senate when he denied that the government was systematically collecting data on hundreds of millions of Americans. Since committing the crime of perjury, he has repeatedly lied about his lies, lying at least four separate times about lying to Congress. For example, in addition to lying about lying about mass surveillance, he’s lied about lying about spreading the Steele dossier, which is itself based on lies.

During the 2020 election, Clapper appeared on CNN to lie about Biden family emails suggesting corruption. Clapper disinformed American voters by propagating the lie that the authentic Biden emails were instead Russian disinformation—“classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft”. Politico has since confirmed that the Biden emails are in fact “genuine”.

Besides being an abominable purveyor of misinformation, Clapper also dabbles in hate speech. YouTube began its modern censorship campaign when it removed Alex Jones for hate speech but, for some reason, YouTube allows Clapper to use the same xenophobic rhetoric. In a video on NBC’s official YouTube channel, Clapper accuses Russians of being “genetically” untrustworthy. “The Russians,” he says, are “typically, almost genetically, driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever.”

Stereotyping Russian people as genetically malicious appears to be a violation of YouTube’s hate speech policy, prohibiting content that incites hatred against groups based on ethnicity and nationality. Alas, YouTube not only continues to host Clapper’s hate speech, but the Big Tech monopoly also continues to promote his misinformation network as “authoritative”.

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