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YouTube imposes 7 day ban on SKY News

SKY News cops ban for publishing COVID videos which breach medical misinformation policies.

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SKY News Australia has been banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after violating its medical misinformation policies.

Guardian Australia reports the ban was imposed on Thursday after posting numerous videos which denied the existence of COVID-19 or encouraged people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

YouTube has not disclosed which videos transgressed policies but said there were “numerous” offending videos which have now been removed.

“We have clear and established Covid-19 medical misinformation policies based on local and global health authority guidance, to prevent the spread of Covid-19 misinformation that could cause real-world harm,” a YouTube spokesperson said.

“We apply our policies equally for everyone regardless of uploader, and in accordance with these policies and our long-standing strikes system, removed videos from and issued a strike to SKY News Australia’s channel.

“Specifically, we don’t allow content that denies the existence of COVID-19 or that encourages people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus. We do allow for videos that have sufficient countervailing context, which the violative videos did not provide.”

A SKY News spokesperson said, “We support broad discussion and debate on a wide range of topics and perspectives which is vital to any democracy.

“We take our commitment to meeting editorial and community expectations seriously.”

The ban came a day after the Daily Telegraph ended Alan Jones’s column amid controversy about his COVID commentary which included referring to the NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant as “a village idiot” on SKY News.

Yesterday SKY News Regional launched in various markets across Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

4 Responses

  1. lol. I’ve been waiting for this since Sky News started gloating about their YouTube success. YouTube cracking down on misinformation isn’t new. The social media manager at Sky News should have been on top of it.

  2. Can I also just add, 9 Sydney last night aired advertisements which look their ‘slow the spread’ campaign, which have the health minister Brad Hazzard giving direct covid facts from a variety of his press conferences, over a white screen telling the statistics of how effective the vaccine is. I know some people say it isn’t right for media companies to promote this, but it ends with ‘start a conversation’ from memory. When you have Sky News after dark trying to drum up incorrect facts, its good to note one of the biggest media companies in Australia are at least attempting to inform the public with facts. True facts at that.

  3. Why is it that big tech can block them for 7 days, yet a watchdog allows the broadcast to continue with the same misguided information? This is such critical information to be accurate, there is no excuse for the constant desperate take on opening up Australia to a largely unvaccinated population.

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