On Wednesday, the Washington Free Beacon cited two anonymous sources interviewed in Katie Couric and Stephanie Soechtig’s first “documentary” film collaboration, 2014’s “Fed Up.” The two sources claimed that, after giving interviews that disagreed with the film’s basic premise, both of their interviews were deceptively edited to make them appear foolish.
While neither source had definitive proof to back up their assertions, what happened next told us everything we needed to know about whether their claims were substantiated. By the next day, the Weinstein Company— distributor of “Fed Up”—had contacted YouTube and ordered them to remove the two interviews. Within hours, the videos had disappeared, replaced by a notice that they were taken down due to “a copyright claim by Weinstein.”
The Free Beacon has since reported it is “requesting that the videos be reinstated on fair use grounds since the videos are the subject of a news report,” and has uploaded the videos to Vimeo. So far, the Weinstein Company has refused requests for comment.
