YouTube continues to push liberal biased election content
November 8, 2022
In the lead-up to the election, NowThis has no pretense at being impartial – an interesting commentary on where parts of the media stand here. The protections – that free speech – and liberties that are given to the press are about it being informative, educational even. Not for it to be wholly in the bag for one political party at election time.
Take its most recent set of videos on their YouTube channel. This is written the day before the actual election, the videos, therefore, being those they have posted that day and the day before said election.
The video covers how “Reproductive rights, voting rights, and LGBTQ+ rights are all on the ballot” — and they’re not talking about how the Republicans might be right on such issues. Of course not, this is a rallying call to the Democratic base. Then there’s the Kansas Senate candidate talking about abortion. Another of those issues for the D base. Gov. Steve Sisolak with a video waving trans flags. Sisolak does not run with the (R) crowd. A news piece about how former President Barack Obama is supporting Arizona Gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs. This is not, we’re all astonished to hear, something positive about the (R) crowd. The piece on “6 Critical Reasons to Vote” uses the standard D talking points. Trans, abortion etc, absolutely nothing about inflation, the economy or anything that any R has been saying.
There is one video about Republicans. “Who is Kevin McCarthy?” which runs heavily on the idea that he’s going to come eat your babies – sorry, is not someone that NowThis thinks is a nice person.
Yes, it’s true, the Democratic Party would like to beat the Republican Party in these elections. As the reverse is also true. But an actual media, a press, worthy of the name would be impartial as to which party. That is the test that NowThis has just failed.
NowThis News seems inconsequential when we look at traffic to the website, it’s out at position 2,500 for news and media in the U.S. It gains maybe half a million visits per month from that position. But that’s not the influence there. Its YouTube channel, where these videos appear, has more than 2 million subscribers. This is an influential outlet and it is precisely these videos that constitute that influence.
There is a place for shills in politics, that’s the paid political advertisements that candidates run. There’s a place for a media, a press, which examines the claims being made and informs upon them. NowThis – as so much of the modern media – pretends to be the one and is actually the other. They’re also getting that pretense the wrong way around – pretending to be a shill then being impartial just ain’t what they’re doing now, is it?