PragerU

PragerU, short for Prager University, is an American non-profit organization that creates videos on various political, economic and philosophical topics from an American conservative or right-wing perspective. The organization was co-founded by talk show host and writer Dennis Prager and Allen Estrin.[1][2] The videos are posted on YouTube and usually feature a speaker who lectures for about five minutes.[3][4] The organization relies on donations, and much of its early funding came from fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks.[2][4]

Not to be confused with Prague University.
PragerU
Formation2009
Founders
  • Dennis Prager
  • Allen Estrin
Websiteprageru.com
PragerU
Personal information
NationalityAmerican
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2009–present
Genre
  • Politics
  • current affairs
Subscribers2.4 million
Total views920 million
100,000 subscribers
1,000,000 subscribers 2017
Updated January 2020

PragerU is not a university or academic institution.[5][4] It does not hold classes, does not grant certifications or diplomas, and is not accredited by any recognized body.[6]

History

PragerU was founded in 2009 by conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager and radio producer and screenwriter Allen Estrin,[7] in order to present conservative views and to offset what Prager regards as the undermining of college education by the left.[3][8] The two originally considered making it a brick-and-mortar university, but the idea was revised into a digital product to save money.[4] PragerU is based in the San Fernando Valley,[2] and it had around 50 employees as of January 2020.[4]

Since a lawsuit over the use of a photograph in 2013, PragerU has used animation in its videos.[9] According to its CEO, Marissa Streit, a group of approximately 500 students called "PragerFORCE" promotes its videos.[8] PragerU reached a billion views in 2018.[2]

Dennis Prager, co-founder of PragerU

In July 2019, PragerU representative Allen Estrin attended President Donald Trump's Social Media Summit, along with other conservative organizations and people such as Charlie Kirk and James O'Keefe.[10][11]

Conflicts with Youtube, Google, and Facebook

In October 2016, PragerU published a petition which said that YouTube (which is owned by Google) had unjustly put 21 of PragerU's videos in Youtube's "restricted mode" setting, which limits views based on factors such as the viewer's age. The petition requested that Youtube remove the videos from restricted mode.[12][13] Youtube responded, saying that "We aim to apply the same standards to everyone and we don’t censor anyone. Often it’s not the right approach to say that videos with the same topic should get the same rating. We’ll need to take into consideration what the intent of the video is, what the focus of the video is, what the surrounding metadata of the video explains."[3]

In October 2017, PragerU filed a federal lawsuit against Google, claiming that 37 of its videos on YouTube were unfairly demonetized or flagged so that they could only be viewed with "restricted mode filtering" (which limits views based on certain characteristics, including the age of the viewer).[14] PragerU claimed that Google's actions violated the First Amendment and asserted YouTube was a public forum. In March 2018, the case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who ruled that because Google was a private company, PragerU had failed to show that it had infringed its free speech rights.[15][16][17] In February 2020, this ruling was upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.[18][19]

In August 2018, PragerU criticized YouTube for adding fact-checks to YouTube videos which cover climate change.[20]

In August 2018, Facebook removed two PragerU videos from its platform, later restoring the videos, saying that they "were mistakenly removed".[1][21] According to Francesca Tripodi, professor of sociology at James Madison University, there are plausible non-ideological explanations for Facebook's removal of several of the videos.[22] PragerU contended that Facebook had engaged in deliberate censorship of their videos.[1][21]

Funding

The organization depends on donations to produce its content.[6] Much of the early funding for PragerU came from hydraulic fracturing billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks.[2][4] Two members of the Wilks family are on PragerU's board.[2] The next-largest donor is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.[7][23] Other donors include the Morgan Family Foundation, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Donors Trust, and the Minnesota-based Sid and Carol Verdoorn Foundation, led by former C.H. Robinson CEO Sid Verdoorn.[23]

As of 2018, the organization reportedly had a $10 million annual budget, of which it spent more than 40% on marketing.[2] In 2019, PragerU raised $22 million and expects to receive $25 million in 2020.[4][24] PragerU consistently spends more on Facebook advertising than major political campaigns and national advocacy groups.[25] It ranks among the 10 biggest political spenders on the platform.[25]

Content

PragerU releases one video per week on various topics from a conservative viewpoint.[4][6] As of January 2020, its YouTube channel included 871 videos.[26] PragerU largely avoids mentioning President Donald Trump. Each video costs between $25,000 and $30,000 to create.[2]

Videos on PragerU have defended capitalism, argued against a $15 minimum wage, argued that gun ownership is a constitutional right, and argued that the media cannot be trusted. In one video, Dave Rubin argues that "racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, and Islamophobia" are "meaningless buzzwords". In a video on the topic of the alt-right, Michael Knowles argues that it is similar to the American Left, saying "the alt-Right has nothing in common with conservatism, and is in fact much closer to leftism... Except of course, the left is much, much larger."[2]

Other PragerU videos defend the Electoral College, arguing that "pure democracies do not work" and that the Electoral College thwarts voter fraud.[7] In more than a dozen videos, PragerU promotes fossil fuels and disputes the scientific consensus on climate change; in one of the organization's videos, viewed over 1.5 million times, fossil-fuel proponent Alex Epstein promotes misinformation about climate change, including false and misleading claims.[27] According to Mother Jones, still other videos argue there is no police discrimination toward African-Americans, and the gender pay gap does not exist.[7]

PragerU has developed two partnership programs to help cultivate relationships with educators.[28] PragerU's Educator Program supplies teachers with lesson plans and study guides that accompany their videos. Additionally, secondary school teachers and college professors can register their classes through PragerU's Academic Partnership program, which lets students sign up and allows teachers to monitor their students' progress.[28]

Reception

As of August 2019, PragerU videos have been watched more than 2 billion times, and are becoming a staple on college campuses.[25] In its 2019 annual report, PragerU stated that its videos have received over 2.5 billion lifetime views.[24] PragerU has ranked highly in influence compared to other free-market organizations, such as Reason and National Review.[29]

Vanity Fair said PragerU "packages right-wing social concepts into slick videos" and that PragerU was "one of the most effective conversion tools for young conservatives."[30]

Sociologist Francesca Tripodi described the effect of PragerU's videos in a report for the Data & Society Research Institute.[31] In a 2018 study, Tripodi used Candace Owens and James Damore as case studies in order to demonstrate that there is a Youtube algorithmic connections between Fox News, PragerU, and alt-right YouTube personalities.[31][32] Tripodi wrote that PragerU relies on "search engine optimization and suggested content to elevate their messaging," and that PragerU's content "allows for those who identify as mainline conservatives to gain easy access to white supremacist logic."[32] On page 36 of her report, Tripodi observed that PragerU was very popular among the respondents who participated in her study. She noted that regardless of age, all participants in her study confirmed either having liked or shared PragerU videos on Facebook. Tripodi also observed that “Sites like PragerU create an opportunity to dabble in content that seems extremely innocuous, yet makes connections to the same kinds of ‘revelations’ pushed out by the alt-right."[2]

A Buzzfeed News article published in 2018 attributed PragerU's success to the quality of its production values compared to similar outlets, and to its use of popular presenters with established audiences. The article also noted that it had received comparatively little attention from news and media analysts due to PragerU's lack of coverage of topical issues, such as Donald Trump.[2]

Libertarian magazine Reason has criticized PragerU's claims of being censored by big tech companies for being false (the company hasn't been taken down on any social media platforms) and misunderstanding the First Amendment as protecting a party from any kind of censorship, not just from the government.[33]

Critiques of videos

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Historian Kevin M. Kruse has described a PragerU video as false revisionism. The video, entitled "Why Did the Democratic South Become Republican?" and hosted by political scientist Carol M. Swain, discussed the Republican Party's "Southern strategy" of the late 1960s. According to Kruse, the video presented a distortion of history, cherry-picked its evidence, and was an "exercise in attacking a straw man".[32]

In an article for the American Conservative, historian and philosopher Paul Gottfried, who has written extensively on the subject of fascism, harshly criticized a PragerU video hosted by Dinesh D'Souza which maintained that fascism was a leftist ideology. D'Souza maintained that Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, who influenced Italian fascism, was a leftist, to which Gottfried noted that this contradicted the research by "almost all scholars of Gentile’s work, from across the political spectrum, who view him, as I do in my study of fascism, as the most distinguished intellectual of the revolutionary right."[34][35]

Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute criticized a 2018 PragerU video by Michelle Malkin as being anti-immigration. Nowrasteh wrote that the video was "rife with errors and half-truths, leaves out a lot of relevant information, and comes to an anti-legal immigration conclusion that is unsupported by the evidence presented in the rest of the video."[36]

Regarding the PragerU video "The Suicide of Europe" by Douglas Murray, ADL fellow Mark Pitcavage has said that he does not consider it fascist or white nationalist, but that the video is prejudiced, and he says that it contains anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that would certainly be agreeable to white supremacists.[23]

References
  1. "Facebook apologises to right-wing site". BBC News. July 20, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  2. Bernstein, Joseph (March 3, 2018). "How PragerU is winning the Right Wing culture war without Donald Trump". BuzzFeed. Retrieved March 12, 2018.
  3. Hiawatha Bray (October 14, 2016). "YouTube restricts access to Dershowitz video". The Boston Globe. Retrieved August 28, 2017.
  4. Bowles, Nellie (2020-01-04). "Right-Wing Views for Generation Z, Five Minutes at a Time". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  5. Fearnow, Benjamin (July 16, 2019). "Google classified Lincoln speech, Dershowitz videos as "pornography," Prager University founder tells Fox News". Newsweek. Retrieved August 8, 2019.
  6. "Frequently Asked Questions". PragerU. September 5, 2015. Retrieved March 15, 2019.
  7. Oppenheimer, Mark (March–April 2018). "Inside the right-wing YouTube empire that's quietly turning millennials into conservatives". Mother Jones. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  8. Klug, Lisa (June 14, 2017). "Super-conservative PragerU aims to arm pro-Israel students for their campus 'wastelands'". The Times of Israel. Retrieved August 28, 2017.
  9. Donnelly, Madaline (November 4, 2015). "How Dennis Prager's conservative online university reaches millions". DailySignal.com. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
  10. Overly, Steven. "Social media gadflies gather for airing of grievances with Trump". POLITICO. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  11. Gilbert, Ben. "The White House social-media summit doesn't have Facebook or Twitter, but it does have conservative conspiracy theorists — here's who was reportedly invited". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
  12. "Stop YouTube From Blocking PragerU Videos! | PragerU". 2016-10-13. Archived from the original on 2016-10-13. Retrieved 2020-01-31.
  13. "Why Is YouTube Censoring 21 Educational Videos From PragerU?". The Federalist. 2016-10-12. Retrieved 2020-01-31.
  14. Mullin, Joe (October 25, 2017). "PragerU sues YouTube, says it censors conservative videos". Ars Technica. Retrieved November 13, 2017.
  15. Neidig, Harper (27 March 2018). "Judge dismisses lawsuit alleging Google censorship of conservative YouTube videos". TheHill.
  16. Stempel, Jonathan (March 27, 2018). "Google defeats lawsuit claiming YouTube censors conservatives". Reuters.
  17. Prager University v. Google LLC, Order Granting Defendants' Motion to Dismiss (N.D. Cal. March 28, 2018).
  18. Brodkin, Jon (2020-02-26). "First Amendment doesn't apply on YouTube; judges reject PragerU lawsuit". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2020-02-27.
  19. "Ninth Circuit Tosses PragerU's Free Speech Claims Against YouTube". 2020-02-26. Retrieved 2020-02-27.
  20. Hirji, Zahra (August 7, 2018). "YouTube Is Fighting Back Against Climate Misinformation". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved August 8, 2018.
  21. Asher Hamilton, Isobel (August 21, 2018). "Facebook apologizes to right-wing group PragerU after being accused of censoring its videos". Business Insider. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  22. Schwartz, Oscar (2018-12-04). "Are Google and Facebook really suppressing conservative politics?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-11-24.
  23. Kotch, Alex (December 27, 2018). "Who Funds PragerU's Anti-Muslim Content?". Sludge. Retrieved December 28, 2018.
  24. https://www.prageru.com/prageru-2019-annual-report.pdf
  25. "How a Los Angeles-based conservative became one of the internet's biggest sensations". Los Angeles Times. 2019-08-23. Retrieved 2019-11-20.
  26. "Uploads from PragerU". YouTube. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
  27. McCarthy, Joseph (December 18, 2018). "A Course in Climate Misinformation: How Prager U. Is Propagating Climate Misinformation". The Weather Channel.
  28. Shea, Brie (April 30, 2015). "Fracking Titans Spend Millions Proselytizing School Children". Rewire.News. Retrieved December 28, 2018.
  29. Chafuen, Alejandro. "The 2020 Ranking Of Free-Market Think Tanks Measured By Social Media Impact". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  30. Nguyen, Tina (December 9, 2018). "'Let Me Make You Famous': How Hollywood Invented Ben Shapiro". Vanity Fair. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
  31. Tripodi, Francesca (2018). "Searching for Alternative Facts: Analyzing Scriptural Inference in Conservative News Practices" (PDF). Date & Society Research Institute. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
  32. Kelley, Brendan Joel (June 7, 2018). "PragerU's Influence". Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved September 8, 2018.
  33. Binion, Bill (July 30, 2019). "PragerU Does Not Understand Censorship". Reason. Retrieved February 2, 2020.
  34. Gottfried, Paul. "Right-wing Celebrities Play Fast and Loose With History". The American Conservative. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  35. Molloy, Parker. "PragerU relies on a veneer of respectability to obscure its propagandist mission". Media Matters for America. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  36. Nowrasteh, Alex (September 26, 2018). "PragerU's "A nation of immigrants" video has serious problems". Cato at Liberty. Cato Institute.
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