YouTube Joins the Ranks of Media Giants Capitulating to Trump Regime

WASHINGTON —YouTube on Monday agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit Donald Trump brought against the platform after it suspended his account following the violent Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

YouTube suspended President Trump’s account days after Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. At the time, the streaming platform cited Trump’s potential to incite further political violence as the legitimate rationale driving its suspension.

Free Press has been tracking the responses of the nation’s 35 largest media companies to Trump-administration efforts to bully the media to support his political agenda. The Media Capitulation Index found that to varying degrees the owners of America’s largest media firms are caving to pressure from an authoritarian-minded president and his captured federal agencies. This capitulation is not unique to owners of news outlets — like Paramount (which owns CBS), Disney (ABC) and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN). Rather, it’s a pervasive trend that applies to nearly all commercial media, including cable and telecommunications firms and online platforms, such as YouTube.

Free Press Senior Director Timothy Karr, who created the Media Capitulation Index, said:

“YouTube’s decision to capitulate to Trump is part of a deeply worrying trend among the nation’s most influential media companies. Rather than tell the truth about this administration’s war on free speech, the nation’s biggest and wealthiest media corporations are caving to Trump’s demands and offering massive payouts to curry favor with the administration. 

“Nine of the 10 richest men in the United States are media executives and owners. This list includes the founders of YouTube’s parent company Alphabet, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. These billionaires are so embedded within the power structures of society — and so entangled with and dependent on government contracts and other official favors — that they aren’t considering the troubling consequences of bending to the whims of an abusive leadership. 

“Media capitulation is a slippery slope. Once these owners compromise their companies’ independence — once they step across the line into compliance — the temptation to cave further to official pressure grows even stronger. The slide toward state propaganda becomes inevitable when a media owner’s financial interests align fully with those of a corrupt, dishonest and bigoted regime. Lost in this collapse of media independence are the people these companies are supposed to be serving in a democracy. No PR campaign will restore YouTube’s integrity following such a staggering failure to stand up for truth and democracy.”