February 13, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Conservatives are questioning the purported impartiality of Google-owned video giant YouTube once again this week, following the revelation that the company is lending financial support for the far-left commentary outlet Young Turks.
Axios reports that, as part of YouTube’s $25 million “investment” in creating news content, it has decided to give the Turks a sum “in the mid-six figures range” to support the channel’s TYT Academy project, an online course ostensibly to help train users in journalism practices and video production.
On paper, the partnership is supposed to be a non-partisan effort to support local news creators, with TYT chief business officer Steven Oh assuring Axios the company is “not interested in cranking out journalists who share our political viewpoint whatsoever.” Conservatives are doubtful, however, given the record of the Turks and their lead host (and congressional candidate), Cenk Uygur.
No bias to see here. ALL IS WELL!! https://t.co/IsWIjRohch
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) February 11, 2020
YT is headed by the only Democrat congressional candidate crazy and hateful enough for Bernie Sanders unendorse him. But you can’t do targeted political ads or show a gun because that is against YouTube’s “values.” https://t.co/xaqYHbfmpc
— Matt Knee (@matt_knee) February 11, 2020
This is unexpected. The Young Turks is a popular YouTube channel but it's also named after the people who carried out the Armenian Genocide, it's very far left, and it's leader is currently running for congress. https://t.co/nAK2qYwF7Q
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) February 11, 2020
Google severely limited political candidates' ability to efficiently target their advertising to interested voters, but Google is plowing hundreds of thousands of dollars into an explicitly left-wing, pro-Bernie “news” network https://t.co/1ComXSgfXn
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) February 11, 2020
Among Uyger’s far-left views is the claim that progressives (a movement that only began to take shape in America following the Civil War, and whose leading figures included the notoriously racist President Woodrow Wilson) deserve the credit for the American Revolution, ending slavery, and enacting civil rights laws. He also came under fire in 2018 for the discovery of past comments in which he wrote that women who didn’t want to sleep with him were “genetically flawed.”
At NewsBusters, Alexander Hall recalls that TYT contributor Hasan Piker (Uygur’s nephew) has been a source of controversy for calling the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) “tragic yet incredibly ironic” because of Scalise’s support for gun rights, and for declaring last year that “America deserved 9/11, dude.”
Conservatives have long been wary of Google and YouTube due to recurring cases of biased search results and left-wing discrimination. YouTube has deleted investigation footage from pro-life group Live Action, censored discussion of transgenderism and mental illness, restricted educational videos from conservative pundit Dennis Prager on false “mature content” pretenses, and more.