YouTube bans Shawnee Mission school board video over COVID misinformation at meeting
Update: The Shawnee Mission school district provided to The Star the public comments portion that got the school board video banned from YouTube. Watch it above.
Video of a Shawnee Mission school board meeting — where several parents and a Kansas state senator called for the district to remove its mask mandate — was banned from YouTube for violating community standards related to the spread of disinformation.
Some residents shared COVID-19 fallacies during the meeting’s public comment period, school board president Heather Ousley said in a tweet Wednesday, after the district learned of YouTube’s action.
“An individual indicated incorrectly that it wasn’t contagious and that masks cause cancer,” Ousley wrote.
The video of the Monday meeting was not immediately available for The Star to review. The district does not post public meetings anywhere other than YouTube, where they are livestreamed.
Several residents have spread misinformation about COVID-19 and mask-wearing at county, city and school board meetings throughout this past year. But this was the first time the district learned a video was removed, said spokesman David Smith.
Before the meeting, more than two dozen residents gathered to protest the district’s mask mandate — which officials have said will stay in place. Among the crowd was Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, who also spoke during public comments.
Throughout the legislative session, Thompson pushed for an end to public health rules adopted to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, and he continues to claim that masks are ineffective.
“Think of it this way,” he told the school board, according to the right-wing news organization the Kansas Sentinel. “I’m about 6-feet-tall. Saying this mask is going to block the virus is like saying I can’t walk through a doorway 6,000 feet tall and 2,000 feet wide. That I’m going to bump into walls and it’s going to prevent me from getting through that doorway. That’s how tiny the virus is.”
Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have shown that multi-layer masks effectively block particles that could contain the virus.
In an email to The Star, Thompson said that there was “no medical misinformation” in the meeting and that he had attended to support parents upset about continued mask mandates. He provided a link to a study criticizing mask use that has since been retracted.
“Some of the students took the microphone to express how the masks made it hard for them to breathe. There was also one parent whose children were put into a separate room by themselves for not wearing a mask,” Thompson said.
Thompson said he was disappointed with YouTube’s decision to remove the video and questioned whether the Kansas Legislature should continue to rely on the platform for public streaming of committee meetings.
“The whole purpose of the public comment portion of the meeting is to allow those whose tax dollars fund the operation of the school to have a say. And it allows parents a course of action if they disagree with the board’s decisions. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention ‘fact checkers’ as being the gateway to free speech,” Thompson said. “Transparency in government is vital to the operation of our Republic. If YouTube cannot provide that transparency, then we need to find an alternative path to providing information to everyone interested in observing and participating in the process, without fear of censorship.”
Dave Trabert, who wrote the Sentinel article and is CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute, said he spoke to the school board about his belief that public school districts have mishandled COVID-19 and failed to prioritize student achievement.
Trabert, a regular at Johnson County meetings, said challenges to masking were a matter of opinion and urged the district to post the video to its website.
“If (YouTube) was honest about a concern about broad understanding of public health being damaged, they shouldn’t put anything out that CDC or WHO says,” Trabert told The Star.
In its community guidelines, YouTube provides a long list of COVID-19 fallacies it will remove, including false statements that the virus is not real, that wearing a mask will give you the virus and that children cannot contract the virus.
For a first violation, the user will receive a warning with no penalty. After that, YouTube will issue a strike against the channel. If a user receives three strikes, the channel will be terminated.
“We post everything on YouTube, which is a challenge because if we were to violate community standards again, we would get a strike against us and wouldn’t be able to post for a week,” Smith said. “That would be a serious interference to our work for a week.”
Now officials are left to determine how to continue making public meetings accessible online during the pandemic without stymieing public comments. Smith said the district is considering removing the public comment portion of the meeting and reposting the video.
“It doesn’t limit the ability of our patrons to come and address the board, because that happened and the board listened. So that is the purpose of public speech, is to address the board, and they will continue to be able to do that,” Smith said.
He said the district is still in conversations about how to manage the issue. “We really don’t want to lose our ability to broadcast.”
“We don’t have a platform ourselves to be able to do a broadcast like that, that’s universally available as YouTube is,” Smith said. “So I’m speculating here, but I don’t think there will be any conversation about moving away from YouTube because it’s a universal platform and easy to access.”
Several school districts and municipalities livestream videos of their meetings on YouTube. Johnson County Board of Commissioner meetings — where many of the same residents who were at the Shawnee Mission meeting, like Trabert, have previously attended and fought COVID-19 mandates, at times spreading misinformation — are streamed on the county’s website and on Facebook.
With only a week left in the school year, parents continue to protest district mask mandates. The Blue Valley and Olathe school districts are facing a federal lawsuit, filed by the parents of 16 children, over their mask requirements.
Officials have pleaded with the public to follow COVID-19 protocols so that there are no more interruptions to the school year. On Tuesday, Kansas City Public Schools officials said that Trailwoods Elementary School returned to online-only classes due to a COVID-19 outbreak. Three other classrooms also were forced to quarantine and will not return to in-person classes until June 1.
Only last week were adolescents ages 12 to 15 allowed to start getting the COVID-19 vaccine; younger children still are not eligible. Smith and officials at several other Kansas City area school districts told The Star last week that they are following CDC recommendations to continue masks and physical distancing in schools.
This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 11:14 AM.
