Cleaning Up the News

On June 8, 1972, South Vietnamese planes bombed the village of Trang Bang. Nine-year-old Kim Phúc was photographed fleeing, debris flying behind her as she tore off her burning clothes and screamed, “Nóng quá, nóng quá” (too hot, too hot). Photographer Nick Ut captured this moment, and it stood on the front page of The New York Times the very next day.

When Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten, included Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph in an article posted on Facebook, however, it was censored by the social media site, which labelled the photograph as child pornography. Tom Egeland, the Editor-in-Chief, was also banned from posting anything from the account for 24 hours after the incident.

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg then reposted the picture to protest against what she called “editing out history.” Within a few hours, Facebook reversed its decision, claiming that the photograph’s iconic depiction of the Vietnam War was more important than the “value of protecting the [Facebook] community.” But this is not the first time that a media giant has toyed with censoring certain images or news stories—and it is unlikely to be the last.

Recently, YouTube has also come under fire for, in a less direct way, playing puppet-master with its content. The website has tightened its video monetization rules, which allow it to control which videos can receive advertising. The more views those videos get, the more money advertising agencies earn. In order for video content to be deemed "appropriate" for an advertisement on YouTube, it must be devoid of curse words, drug-related and sexually-suggestive content. YouTube also prohibits video monetization on videos that are related to “controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown.”

In tightly controlling what content can make profits, YouTube is inadvertently controlling what content is produced. While outwardly racist, intolerant, and bigoted content should not be affiliated with an advertisement, creating an economic deterrent for publishing political videos and videos about natural disasters creates dangerously “clean” media.

Under these guidelines, videos covering conflicts in Afghanistan or Syria would not be able to be monetized. Neither would opinionated videos covering the campaigns of presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. While the content would still be up for the public to view, news outlets would lose a huge sum of money and may become more selective when releasing videos, which would limit the amount of information that viewers can receive.

Though Facebook and YouTube are rightfully concerned with deciding whether something is appropriate for public consumption, and YouTube’s video monetization rules are important in keeping controversial issues from become money-makers, we have to be careful that they are not inadvertently censoring content that is important for people to see. Warning signs or external links could be used in cases where content may not be appropriate, as with the photograph of Kim Phúc. But when the media cleans up the news by banning content or making it scarce through economic disincentives, it becomes impossible for viewers to understand the whole truth.