While Internet giants Facebook and Twitter actively meddle in the 2020 election by refusing to allow links to a New York Post article about alleged Hunter Biden emails that may implicate his father Joe Biden, the Democrat nominee for president, in a scandal about his dealings with the Ukraine, another big tech company is also engaging in blatant censorship. Amazon Prime has refused to allow a documentary produced by a prominent Black scholar to stream on its service.
Shelby Steele, a scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, has produced a film on race relations entitled What Killed Michael Brown? The film was directed by Steele’s son Eli Steele, an award winning director.
You may remember that Michael Brown was a black Ferguson, Missouri, man who was killed by a white police officer after assaulting the officer and grabbing for his gun. The film is about the subject of race relations — something that is on everyone’s mind since the death of Minneapolis criminal George Floyd in police custody last May.
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Unfortunately, this film made by a prominent African-American scholar and his award-winning director son failed to meet Amazon’s strict quality standards as to what films it allows on its platform.
Amazon explained the decision to the Steeles: “Thank you for your email regarding, What Killed Michael Brown? Unfortunately, we have found that your title doesn’t meet Prime Video’s content quality expectations and is not eligible for publishing on the service at this time. We will not be accepting re-submission of this title and this decision may not be appealed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
So, to recap, a prominent African-American scholar who has produced an Emmy Award winning documentary in the past — 1990’s Seven Days in Bensonhurst — and his award-winning director son made a documentary about race relations, a subject that is extremely relevant at the current time. Amazon then dismissed the project due to some undisclosed quality concern, while at the same time disallowing any re-submission of the film to the service in the future.
Perhaps the problem was that the film didn’t necessarily follow the mainstream narrative that white police officers are killing black men because of systemic racism.
“We were canceled, plain and simple,” the younger Steele said.
“There were no technical issues with the upload of the video file, caption file and artwork,” Eli Steele told National Review. “Had there been, they would have simply pointed out the problem and asked me to correct it. The fact that they took the step to say that I could not appeal at all is very telling. If you look at the other Ferguson-related documentaries up on Amazon, you will see that we use the same news footage and follow a similar format when it comes to our original footage – interviews, b-roll footage, etc. The only difference between my film and those films is the voice behind the images.”
So, truly, the only “content quality” issues with the film were that Amazon didn’t like the film’s conclusions that possibly Brown was at fault for his own death. Other than their brief email to the Steele’s, Amazon has not commented publicly on the situation as of this writing.
“When Amazon decided to cancel ‘What Killed Michael Brown?’ they let themselves be captured by white guilt,” the elder Steele said. “Amazon doesn’t want justice for blacks as they claim. They want the look of racial innocence attached to their brand.”
Dr. Steele added: “What is most frightening about this experience is that you see up close how much power these tech behemoths wield over us. This affects what we see and speak as citizens. Having experienced this gives me even more insight to how the false narrative surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown exploded.”
Black Lives Matter and other race hustling organizations aren’t picky about who they choose as martyrs. Their only requirement for sainthood appears to be that they are black and were shot by a white police officer. Their own criminal pasts, people they’ve hurt over time and all other character flaws do not matter.
And so Amazon cannot allow that martyrdom to be questioned – at least not on their giant platform.
Kudos to YouTube and their parent company Google for allowing this trailer of the film to remain up — for now.
Fortunately, Vimeo and some other streaming services are still allowing the film to be shown.
