From the Editor: Just because we can all be journalists doesn’t mean we all should
American YouTuber Tyler Oliveira has garnered more than seven million subscribers. (Suneet Gill/Canva)
Just like many other people, I watch YouTube videos in my free time. In between checking out new movie trailers, music, and videos from my favourite content creators, I also catch up on current events by watching clips from media organizations and video essayists.
Eventually, but unfortunately, catching up on current events has somehow convinced my YouTube algorithm that I would be interested in a particular type of “investigative journalism” — quote marks very much intended, as you’ll soon see.
Many months ago, on my explore page, I stumbled upon Tyler Oliveira, an American YouTuber with more than seven million subscribers. While his old videos consisted of elaborate challenges, for the past two years, he has made it his MO to “investigate” or go “inside” various places experiencing different issues.
Now, while I can get into the nitty gritty details of how his attempts at journalism are problematic on several fronts — believe me, there are lots — I think the titles of Oliveira’s videos simply speak for themselves.
Such examples of his work include “England: Where ‘Free Speech’ is ILLEGAL,” “I Investigated George Floyd’s ‘Murder,’” “I Investigated the City that Pays You to Do Drugs…,” and “I Investigated Hitler’s ‘Death’…” — and yes, quote marks are around the words free speech, murder, and death respectively.
Oliveira is also no stranger to B.C. He visited Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on two occasions, first for his 2023 video “I Investigated the Country Where Every Drug is Legal…” and again for this past December’s “Vancouver: Disneyland For Drug Addicts.”
Not only does that first video title falsely suggest Canada decriminalized drugs nationwide, with the second one being insensitive at best, but both go on to feature several uncensored shots of the neighbourhood’s at-risk population. Oliveira also speaks to drug users and community members, asking them leading, charged, and biased questions. In the description box of his videos, there is a disclaimer which notes his content is for “educational and documentary purposes only.”
While it’s true that there is no expectation of privacy in public, it’s hard to see the value in taking your camera and filming a major city’s poorest neighbourhood only to produce less-than-20-minute videos, thinking that can provide an “educational” look into a complex issue.
It’s also hard to see how Oliveira could have really considered journalistic ethics and care in his “reporting” content from the very moment you see his videos pop up in your feed — exaggerated, AI-generated YouTube thumbnails and all.
To give you an example of another one of his videos, in “Inside the Ohio Town Invaded by ‘Cat-Eating’ Haitians,” one resident he interviewed said he saw a van pull over with more than 100 cats in it and that the Haitians inside said that they were “eating them.” Oliveira asked the man if that was “not fake news,” to which his interviewee replied that it wasn’t. And there, just like that, the huge allegation lands in the video with zero explanation of how it was factchecked in any way.
It goes without saying that over-the-top clickbait YouTube content doesn’t exactly translate over into producing hard-hitting investigative journalism. While it would have been easy for me to ignore and swipe past Oliveira’s videos, the reality is that they are gaining huge traction, ranging from hundreds of thousands of views to several million each.
It’s important all of us do our part in being mindful of the media we consume. Have a critical eye, make a note of reputable outlets and journalists so you can check out their work, and develop strategies for curbing harmful, mal-, mis-, and disinformation.
