Conservative News Site LifeSiteNews Banned from Apple News, Claiming Content “Shows Intolerance Towards a Specific Group”
Spencer Baculi
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Conservative news website LifeSiteNews has had their news content approved for and subsequently removed from publication on the Apple News platform in the span of a week, with Apple claiming that the channel “didn’t comply with our Apple News guidelines.”
In an e-mail to LifeSiteNews, the Apple News Team claimed that the reason the site did not comply with their guidelines was stated to be that the “channel content shows intolerance towards a specific group.” In response to this vague reasoning, LifeSiteNews Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen stated that he believes the removal was part of the systematic targeting of conservative viewpoints:
“We don’t yet know the reason for Apple’s decision to delete our channel. However, at a time when there is growing evidence that tech juggernauts are engaging in concerted censorship against even mainstream conservative viewpoints, Apple’s decision – made unilaterally, and without opportunity to appeal – is frightening.
It goes without saying that LifeSite would never promote intolerance or hatred against any group. However, in our current divisive political climate, even mild expressions of common conservative viewpoints are often written off as de facto hatred and intolerance. We certainly hope that this is not what Apple is doing. However, we urge our readers to contact Apple, and to respectfully demand that they reinstate LifeSite’s channel.”
While Westen remains unsure as to why the site was removed from the Apple News service, it appears that the site’s opinions towards members of the LGBT community may have contributed to their removal. In an opinion piece discussing Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, author Don Boys states that Buttigieg is “choosing the lifestyle of homosexuals” and that he “chose to follow his inclinations, desires, etc., into the dark night of perversion, and he chose to “marry” a man.” In another, author Phil Lawlor espouses the belief that the Catholic Church “cannot restore sanity to society until we have restored integrity in our Church,” which Lawlor believes can be accomplished by returning to the exclusion of LGBT individuals from the church.
The site has also referred to transgenderism as “the transgender lie” and “the myth of “transition,” a transgender individual as a “gender-confused man,” and has claimed that supporters of the LGBT community have “bought into lies asserting the normalcy of homosexuality, transgenderism, and the redefinition of marriage”.
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