[Note added 9.1.16: Reggie Yates’s anti-MRA ‘documentary’ will be broadcast again on BBC1 next Tuesday, 12 January, at 10:45 pm.]
In the autumn I had a lengthy meeting in London with a producer and a director working for Sundog Pictures, a media production company, whose chairman and founder is Sam Branson, son of Richard Branson. They solemnly maintained they wished to produce a balanced documentary on the men’s rights movement in the UK, featuring Reggie Yates, for an episode in a BBC3 series on gender issues. They said they wished Reggie Yates to interview me at length.
Along with every other programme in the series – as with all BBC programmes on gender politics – Sundog Pictures’s ‘documentary’ was a feminist-inspired hatchet job. I was never interviewed, and much of the programme focused on Roosh V, who is neither British (he’s American) nor an MRA. There were only three individuals in the programme worth watching, the first two of whom will be speaking at ICMI16 (about which we’ll be making an announcement later this month):
– Milo Yiannopoulos, who doesn’t identify as a MRA
– Josh O’Brien, a 19-year-old British student of politics and sociology
– Rod Lonsdale, a London-based MRA
The programme aired 14 December, and a day or two later we posted onto our YouTube channel what we considered the only elements of merit in the programme, the sections with Milo, Josh and Rod. Up to a day or two ago, the item had attracted 4,000+ views, a huge number of upvotes and few downvotes, and 150+ comments.
This morning I logged onto our YouTube channel as usual, to discover that the piece has been taken down, in response to a copyright infringement claim by Sundog Pictures. What possible explanation could there be, than the company is responding in the way their paymasters, the BBC, want them to respond? In short, to wipe the piece, and the resulting comments, from public view?
The delay in making the copyright infringement claim may be significant, too, as the full programme appears to be no longer available on iPlayer.