The Russian Foreign Ministry has warned that if one of its press briefing videos is taken down again by YouTube, an American journalist or media outlet working in Russia “will go home.”
The ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, issued the warning during a roundtable discussion in the Information Policy Commission of the parliament’s upper house. She added that the Google-owned video hosting service had already blocked a couple of her media briefings.
“What we did – we just came and said: ‘You… block the briefing again, one journalist or one American media [outlet] will go home.’ That’s it… One more blocked briefing – and we will name a specific [person] or a specific media [outlet] that will go home,” Zakharova said.
Apparently referring to the Polish background of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, she added: “Given that this is all done by a lady with Polish citizenship, and given the position of Poland, maybe we will not limit ourselves to the American [media].”
YouTube, unlike many other companies, is not leaving Russia because “they are making a lot of money,” Zakharova said, and “the amount of content that is produced by our creative people” is not easy to find elsewhere. Earlier this week, however, Wojcicki provided a different reason for the company’s presence in Russia: “to deliver independent news into Russia.”