As I was enjoying some football on Sunday, minding my own business and extricated from politics, the announcer chimed in with a promo for the upcoming 60 Minutes episode. Because nothing can be sacred anymore.

They played a clip where the interviewer was chastising YouTube’s CEO for taking a more free speech approach to their moderation and I thought, “this isn’t going to go well.”

Sure enough, it didn’t. Last night, I happened to see a clip from Steve Crowder’s show taking the interview apart and it’s pretty incredible. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

Crowder’s videos are always entertaining, so be sure to check the full video out.

Newsbusters also supplies some excerpts of Lesley Stahl going full Stalin on censorship. It’s pretty crazy to see someone from the “free press” actually be the aggressor in trying to get a private company to suppress speech, but that’s where we are in 2019.

Narrating for the segment, Stahl then proclaimed that “the private sector is not legally beholden to the First Amendment.” She then inquired, “You’re not operating under some freedom of speech mandate. You get to pick.”

Wojcicki replied, “We do,” and further suggested that, while this may be true, “we think there’s a lot of benefit from being able to hear from groups and underrepresented groups that otherwise we never would have heard from.”

Stahl summarized YouTube’s policy, stating that, “videos are allowed as long as they don’t cause harm, but her [Wojcicki’s] definition of ‘harm’ can seem narrow.”

So who should get to define harm then? Lesley Stahl? CBS? Some government body? The indication here is that the current legal code isn’t enough. It’s a tyrannical notion that seeks to limit free speech by giving the power to cull it to bureaucrats defining “hate speech.”

YouTube’s CEO would push back slightly at the notion with this comment.

” However, she clarified by explaining her company’s current stance on hate, stating, “Just to be clear, because you’ve asked me so many questions about hate, that’s not necessarily something that we’re getting any legislation about. That’s allowed. That’s allowed here in the U.S.”

Correct. “Hate” is allowed in the United States because we value the right of free expression and recognize that arbitrarily trying to define it leads to a very bad place. Unless someone is provably calling for violence or inciting it with their rhetoric, the proper thing to do is air on the side of free speech.

And if Lesley Stahl doesn’t like that, you know what she can do? Not watch.

Of course, we know this isn’t really about causing violence as much as it is about being chapped over the 2016 election. Stahl gets into that, claiming that the Russians infiltrated YouTube with . Her proof? A single video by some guy sharing his opinions, which got only a few hundred views before being pulled down. It had no impact and even if the video came from Russia, so what? YouTube is an international company. If a Russian wants to upload a video, that’s not illegal, nor should it be.

Later, she claims that videos of mass shootings have been put on YouTube. Correct, and they’ve been immediately taken down. Ironically, while 60 Minutes is making that complaint, they are showing the very same Christchurch video as B roll.

To make things more ridiculous, Stahl then showed a Trump ad, which she claimed was false and shouldn’t have been allowed on the site. The problem? The ad was 100% true. It accused Joe Biden threatening Ukraine with aid money and having the prosecutor looking into his son fired. That’s demonstrably true and the ad does not actually make a judgement on Biden’s motive. Even still, it’s a political ad. Of course they are going to contain spin. Why not use a misleading Democrat ad as an example? Well, we all know why.

The idea that YouTube should censor political speech based on things CBS doesn’t like is ludicrous and dangerous.

But this is the road the mainstream media want to travel down. They want to be the gatekeepers again, which is why they are constantly attacking social media companies (who themselves haven’t been the greatest stewards of free speech). Imagine a world where Lesley Stahl is one of your only sources of news? Anyone want to go back to that? I didn’t think so.

These networks should be ashamed for even running an interview like this. It’s so contrary to every ideal of free speech in this country.

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