WTH?! Netflix Blocked Meidas Coverage on Trump?!

Written by Ben Meiselas

Seriously, Netflix?

I will keep this short, folks. I am pissed.

I made a video report this morning at 4 AM about how top Trump supporter Hulk Hogan got mercilessly booed during a WWE Raw wrestling event that took place at a stadium in Inglewood/Los Angeles, California, on Monday night. Hogan was a main speaker at the Republican National Convention and spoke before Trump on the biggest night of the convention. His RNC speech was unhinged, as was his participation at the Trump hate rally at Madison Square Garden.

Anyway, as part of my reporting, I included a 9-second clip of Hulk Hogan getting booed.

That’s right, only 9 seconds!

The Los Angeles crowd was clearly booing Hogan because of his divisive political involvement. This was a reflection of Trump’s unpopularity as well.

This was clearly newsworthy, and I made sure to use a very short clip.

Anyway, I was contacted by YouTube this morning that Netflix wanted our content removed.

What?!

Netflix claimed that because it owns the rights to WWE, it was asserting a copyright over our video and blocking it in multiple territories

.

Let me be clear—this is BS.

Before I started MeidasTouch, I was a lawyer who did deals with Netflix for my clients.

Netflix commonly uses “newsworthy” sports clips or public event clips, just as we used the Hogan clip, in their movies and documentaries under the “fair use doctrine.” That is, news reporters like me, or documentarians, are entitled to use newsworthy clips without copyright claims if the duration is sufficiently short and the subject matter is sufficiently newsworthy.

I am oversimplifying the “fair use doctrine,” but any lawyer at Netflix giving a legal opinion on this would agree that our use of the 9-second Hogan footage was permissible.

For example, this is why Fox “News” was permitted to use clips of my interview with President Biden without asking me—and those clips were way longer than 9 seconds.

So, what is this really about?

Sadly, I think it’s obvious.

It’s about protecting Trump and covering up the boos.

As you may know, the Netflix owner took the “pilgrimage of shame” to Mar-A-Lago and kissed the ring. It’s obvious what took place at the meeting, is it not?

Anyway, I reshot the video.

But I would like to send a powerful message to Netflix right here and right now for censoring our reporting.

I want to see if we can add 100 paid subscribers to the MeidasTouch Substack today, right here, and right now, to show them and other billionaire-backed companies that every time they pull stunts like this, our network will grow brick by brick.

We have zero outside investors and are under the influence of no billionaires, no oligarchs, and no shareholders at all.

We report to you, the Meidas Mighty—our stakeholders. That’s it.

The billionaires can try to shut us up, but they can’t shut us down.

The power of our network is the power of this community—the Meidas Mighty.

We will keep beating these billion-dollar companies on YouTube and elsewhere on digital, and keep growing. So please subscribe now if you can.