https://arab.news/2kh9h
- The channel was recently banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after posting videos which denied existence of coronavirus
LONDON: Sky News Australia has denied broadcasting coronavirus disease (COVID-19) misinformation describing YouTube’s removal of 23 videos as “totalitarian” and lacking in transparency.
The channel was recently banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after posting videos which denied the existence of COVID-19, thereby breaching the platform’s medical misinformation policies.
Testifying to a federal parliamentary inquiry on Monday, Sky News Australia’s chief executive officer, Paul Whittaker, criticized YouTube for being “frankly, ridiculous.”
Defending the channel’s right to present different opinions on the issue, he said: “(It) now appears commonplace to discredit any debate on contentious issues as misinformation.
“Most of those videos concerning the YouTube policy breaches were reflecting a discussion that was taking place in the scientific and medical community worldwide. Amongst health practitioners and lawmakers both in this country and overseas,” he added.
Sky News Australia was also accused of denying climate change. Whittaker said: “We don’t deny climate change, I accept climate change is happening. The question is, what is the solution?”
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Sky News and co-executive chairman, Lachlan Murdoch, had “a case to answer” for vaccine hesitancy and the promotion of “quack medicine.”
However, Murdoch did not appear before the committee and flew to the US a day before the parliamentary inquiry to reopen Fox News offices.