[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.
What is fascinating in addition is that the trailer on what appeared to be Reggie Yates’s own YouTube channel also looks to have disappeared.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8RxL9kuBs4.
The account holder’s name there was “ReggieSSYates.”
On this occasion however the entire channel has vanished. Before it went, it had trailers from other BBC3 Extreme documentaries as well.
The clip had many negative comments about the program underneath, plus a very high ratio of public downvotes to upvotes – 1,180 thumbs down vs. 217 thumbs up last time I looked.
Most interestingly of all on BBC3’s very own YouTube channel they appear to have removed all the trailers and clips from the programme:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcjoLhqu3nyOFmdqF17LeBQ/search?query=feminism
In my opinion the BBC are handling this cack-handedly. They definitely haven’t heard of the Streisand Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect or else they would know better.
The sledge-hammer of the establishment must be getting quite a familiar foe now Mike. Your resolve is to be admired. And every time they pull some shit like this, a few more folks raise their eyebrows . . .
It’s an attempt to silence criticism and the truth before the programme gets broadcast on a major channel. On Tuesday evening they’re showing it on BBC1.