Media Matters Attacks Kaitlin Bennett and Liberty Hangout

On Thursday, June 20th, Media Matters published an article titled ‘YouTube is allowing multiple accounts to circumvent its ban against Alex Jones’ Infowars‘.

The piece claims, “A Media Matters review found that YouTube, which banned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his far-right Infowars outlet from the platform last August, continues to host multiple channels that stream Infowars content — despite the fact that YouTube’s current policy also bans channels that are focused on streaming Infowars.”

The author lists 14 YouTube channels unaffiliated with InfoWars that would upload content from InfoWars.com and the Alex Jones Show. Some of the accounts they listed had as little as 7 subscribers. 

The article continues:

“YouTube also still hosts channels from Infowars personalities. YouTube has also continued to host channels from other Infowars personalities, who often post content specifically from Infowars:

• • Liberty Hangout, which seems to mainly post content from Infowars personality Kaitlin Bennett.

  • Millennial Millie, which seems to mainly post content from Infowars personality Millie Weaver.

  • Harrison H Smith, which seems to mainly post content from Infowars contributor Harrison Smith.

  • The channel of Infowars personality Paul Joseph Watson.”

Media Matters appears to take credit for the removal of channels they claim circumvented Alex Jones’ ban from the platform, stating, “YouTube has been forced to deal with multiple channels that circumvented the ban. Despite YouTube’s ban, Infowars appeared to continue running multiple channels streaming its content, which YouTube only removed after Media Matters’ reporting in March.” 

The author, Alex Kaplan, continues, “YouTube’s policy is to remove channels trying to circumvent its Infowars ban, even if they do not appear to be operated by Infowars. Following reporting on copycat channels that were then banned, Media Matterslearned that YouTube’s policy is to terminate accounts that livestream or upload unaltered Infowars broadcasts in an attempt to get around the website’s ban — even if those channels are not directly related to Jones’ outlet.”

In a June 21st update, Media Matters notes, “Every copycat channel listed that had uploaded Infowars content has been removed, with most now showing a message saying they were ‘terminated for a violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service.’ The channels from Infowars personalities remain up.”

Liberty Hangout is its own independent outlet owned and operated by Kaitlin Bennett’s fiancé, Justin Moldow, since 2015. Our YouTube channel has been around just as long, and was home to libertarian podcasts, interviews, and debates prior to Bennett joining our team in 2017. 

Before going viral as the Kent State Gun Girl, Kaitlin Bennett produced street interviews for Liberty Hangout, and she has continued to do so since her graduation photos at Kent State. 

We vehemently deny Media Matters’ claim that Liberty Hangout is circumventing YouTube’s ban on Alex Jones, and consider their accusation to be libelous in nature. Our YouTube channel has always featured original content that our staff produces and has never reuploaded content from Alex Jones or any other InfoWars.com show. Kaitlin Bennett has been a face for our website for two years and is in no way circumventing a ban on another individual. Kaitlin Bennett is not Alex Jones.

Since Media Matters admits that their reports have led to the removal of other YouTube accounts, we call on them to retract their false and misleading statements about Liberty Hangout and Kaitlin Bennett, before their lies lead our channel to the same fate. We demand a retraction and public apology for their irresponsible and false accusations.

This is not the first time Media Matters has published lies about Kaitlin Bennett. After the Alex Jones Show was banned from iTunes, Bennett went to her local Apple Store to put InfoWars.com on the laptops and iPads to protest their censorship. Alex interviewed Bennett about this incident shortly after it went viral on Twitter.

Putting up https://t.co/QZSsWmZvV5 on all the computers in the Apple Store to stand in solidarity with @RealAlexJones after they banned his show pic.twitter.com/KCmYxyLyFd

— Kaitlin Bennett (@KaitMarieox) August 17, 2018

In her video and her interview with Jones, Bennett made it explicitly clear that she pulled up InfoWars in the Apple Store simply to protest their censorship of conservatives. Meanwhile, Media Matters ran with the false headline, ‘Infowars guest claims to have put Infowars on all the screens at the Apple store because of Apple’s “racism against whites’.

Bennett called out Media Matters for their lies moments after coming across the defamatory article. The hit piece from August 2018 is still up to this day despite Bennett and her followers correcting their fake news.

Media Matters’ lies about Bennett were first tweeted out by Timothy Johnson, who claims responsibility for providing research for the latest attack on Bennett.

Despite InfoWars being banned from other large platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, they selectively wrote about our YouTube channel. Media Matters never made the claim that these same individuals were circumventing Alex Jones’ ban elsewhere. We believe this is because YouTube is the most profitable of the major social media platforms, and censoring us would eliminate a major source of income.

We urge readers to join Kaitlin’s Patreon to support her work before she is censored. You can join today at Patreon.com/KaitlinBennett, or support our team at Patreon.com/LibertyHangout.