No, the White House hasn't ditched YouTube

The White House has denied that it has "abandoned YouTube as the provider of the embedded videos on the president's official home page."

In the report written by Chris Soghoian, a contributor to CNET's Blog Network, the author correctly noted that President Obama's weekly video address was distributed via a Flash player from Akamai instead of YouTube. But the author also wrote that the White House was bowing to pressure from privacy activists. White House officials acknowledged switching players but denied making any permanent decisions about them, or that they were motivated by privacy concerns.

"This week we tested a new way of presenting the President's weekly address by using a player developed in-house," Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, wrote in an e-mail. "This decision is more about better understanding our internal capabilities than it is a position on third-party solutions or a policy. The weekly address was also published in third-party video hosting communities and we will likely continue to embed videos from these services on WhiteHouse.gov in the future."

Those "third-party solutions" Shapiro is talking about include YouTube. The Web's largest video site continues to see video contributions to the White House channel, according to Scott Rubin, a YouTube spokesman.

"The White House hasn't ditched us at all," Rubin said. "If you look at the White House's YouTube channel, you'll see videos are being posted. We're just really excited that there are channels on YouTube that help us see what's going on with the federal government."

[mexic0]

Where did the incorrect information come from? Why did CNET publish incorrect information?

[-Oneota-]

Because journalistic integrity means zilch in the blogging community. Page hits rule the roost.

[AndrewRich]

Soghoian has had a bug up his arse ever since the new WhiteHouse.gov went live about embedded YouTube videos. He can't explain it and mutters something about cookies and privacy policies. It's nonsense, of course, but since CNet publishes his column his rants get media attention. Best just to ignore, I should think.

[dream_fly]

I am still looking for some pure tech news site. I don't mine people's opinion but please don't mix it up with news. It's CNET's false to combine news articles with blog entries on the news section. May be they can't tell the difference.

[7679vaska]

I agree with dream_fly. This appears to be Soghoian's 2nd such article in recent weeks. The earlier article was about the robot.txt article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10153244-46.html

His articles appear to be more opinion and less on applied critical thinking.

[dbrohamTV]

thanks for clearing this up after reading Soghoian's bogus article I have pretty much removed CNet from my daily reading list. I still may move on, because frankly CNet's brand has been thoroughly damaged for me. I really don't trust this site anymore.

[streamOG]

This happens all the time at CNET. They regularly post irresponsible and incorrect pieces to drive up their banner impressions. The author of this article does it all the time.

[sandonet]

Chris, you should be truthful and transparent in your comments. You should inform the readers that you don't like my stories on DRM, and that you own a business that supplies DRM. You don't have to like them but to accuse me of writing incorrect pieces--without citing any proof or examples--and then say I'm doing it to drive banner impressions is just unfair.