Odinian Beta

Sky News Australia is part of News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch. As such, many of its presenters tilt right in their reporting.

This makes them outliers amongst journalists, most of whom tilt left. This is because most journalists want to “change the world” and so they ultimately become activists rather than people committed to reporting the facts without fear or favour.

This bias not only affects what issues they choose to cover but how they cover these issues.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with journalists showing bias to either side of the political spectrum, as long as consumers of media have the option to access alternative sources of information, whether it’s via competitors or social media such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

No alternative viewpoints?

But accessing alternative sources of information becomes a problem when there aren’t any competitors or when social media doesn’t even allow alternative viewpoints to be aired on their platforms.

And this is increasingly the problem with the social media giants.

More and more, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are trying to ram left-wing viewpoints down everyone’s throat by utilising the simple means of labelling anything they disagree with as “misinformation”.

This was vividly illustrated by YouTube’s recent decision to suspend Sky News Australia from posting videos for a week.

While YouTube has been somewhat vague is defining just exactly what “misinformation” it disagreed with, it seems to have something to do with Sky News Australia being one of the few media organisations to question Australia’s approach to dealing with the pandemic.

Specifically, various presenters have raised questions over whether lockdowns should continue to be employed – noting the serious secondary and tertiary effects of such lockdowns – and whether we should learn to live with COVID rather than trying to eliminate it forever from our shores.

Anyone with an average IQ or above would acknowledge that these are reasonable questions, whatever your personal opinion on these matters.

And the same people would probably agree with me that having a media that questions the government and other authorities rather than blindly doing their bidding is also a good thing for society.

Not YouTube, it seems.

YouTube loves Big Brother

YouTube seems to think that all media organisations should unquestionably follow government or “expert” diktats and that viewers, listeners and readers who think for themselves should be censored.

Ironically, this view is no different from how the media operates in authoritarian countries such as China.

The actions of YouTube – and Facebook and Twitter, for that matter – in recent years certainly suggest they are big fans of the Chinese model: namely, a notionally capitalist economy with a ruthless and corrupt elite running the show and cancelling anyone that disagrees with the ruling class.

Exhibit A is their response to the Trump Presidency.

Above the law?

Moreover, Sky News Australia continues to broadcast on pay / cable TV, on free-to-air TV, and over the radio while also posting content to its website.

It of course breaks no laws in doing so.

Despite this, YouTube seems to think it has a right to censor Sky News Australia for “misinformation” and deny the billions of people who use YouTube a variety of voices on the most pressing topics and issues of the day.

Competition the saviour

Despite YouTube’s disgraceful antics, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it had competitors.

But like Facebook and Twitter, it is a global monopoly without any competitors of similar size and influence.

This should raise serious alarm bells for anyone concerned about diversity of opinion, the only type of diversity that actually matters.

Social media’s actions in banning Trump certainly caught the eye of non-American politicians everywhere, on both sides of politics. Unlike their docile American counterparts, the likes of Angela Merkel understand the danger that the social media giants present.

And frankly, given they are global monopolies, what right do YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have to censor anyone?