YouTube is coming under criticism for continuing to keep online a ten-minute interview with Scott Roeder, who was convicted after a 37-minute deliberation of first-degree murder for killing Dr. George Tiller, whose Kansas clinic performed late-term abortions.
The interview is by phone but includes a scroll with the text. It was held on February 5 and posted four days ago, and had 3,551 hits at press time.
The interview was conducted by Dave Leach, "who also orchestrated the prison art fundraising action to help pay for Roeder's legal defence and authored a manual detailing how to damage abortion clinics," according to an article in the British newspaper The Guardian.
"YouTube, whose community guidelines purport to "take seriously" any content containing "predatory behaviour, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people's personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts or to violate," is providing free hosting services so that Roeder might disseminate his message of violent hatred," the Guardian continued.
The interview, identified as "Part 1," is to be part of a series, according to an article by the Associated Press.
While YouTube has not commented on the video, on February 10, the site instituted something called "safety mode," "an opt-in setting that helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don't want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube," according to the YouTube blog. With safety mode on, the Roeder-Leach interview doesn't show up.
