Pro-life film removed from Amazon Prime despite overwhelmingly positive reviews
A pro-life filmmaker is raising allegations of censorship after his documentary was removed from Amazon Prime Video because of poor customer reviews despite the fact that the film received overwhelmingly positive reviews.
Marcus Pittman’s movie, “Babies are Still Murdered Here,” was released in October 2019.
According to IMDb, “this documentary goes into the deep underpinnings of major national lobbyist groups to find out why after 46 years Babies Are Still Murdered Here?”
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During an interview with FaithWire last week, Pittman, a director and producer with Crown Rights Media, explained that Amazon officials told him that his movie was removed from the online video streaming platform “based on a combination of … star reviews and customer reviews.”
But based on those metrics alone, there was no reason to remove the film, he believes.
“The movie has really good reviews,” Pittman assured. “It has … over 340 reviews on Amazon. Most of them — 90% of them — are 5-star reviews.”
“I realized that if you go and read the reviews of the movie … their AI [artificial intelligence] categorizes the reviews based on keywords that are pulled out from the customer reviews,” he said. “Some of those keywords were words, like ‘pro-life,’ ‘end abortion,’ ‘pro-life movement.’ And that, to me, is the only reason why they … would remove the movie.”
The Chrisitan Post reached out to Amazon for comment on Pittman’s documentary. A response was not received by press time.
When asked “how common” the supposedly “accidental censorship” is at Amazon Prime, Pittman responded by saying Amazon CEO “Jeff Bezos pretty much banned any books that refer to … homosexual conversion therapy.”
“So, I think there is a lot of bias against Christianity that we’re going to see more and more on Amazon; especially as they grow,” he said.
This is not the first time that Amazon has faced allegations of censorship.
Last year, the online retail giant pulled books by authors describing how a relationship with Jesus Christ helped rid them of their same-sex attractions, telling one of them that his book was in "violation of our content guidelines" but did not point out which parts were objectionable.
The removal of those books came after Amazon removed books by a Catholic psychologist amid LGBT activist pressure.
Amazon has barred some conservative organizations, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council, from its AmazonSmile program. The AmazonSmile program enables customers to have 0.5% of their purchase price for certain items donated to a nonprofit organization of their choice.
Both the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council, conservative Christian organizations, have been designated “hate groups” by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center.
Amazon’s relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center came up during a Capitol Hill hearing that took place late last month.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told Bezos that Amazon allows the SPLC to “dictate who can receive donations on your AmazonSmile platform.”
Gaetz asked why Amazon would rely on a group that “seems to be so out-of-step and seems to take mainstream Christian doctrine and label it as hate” to help determine which charities are “extremist organizations.”
Bezos acknowledged that “this is an imperfect system.” While the Amazon chief said that he would be willing to look into using another source besides the SPLC when deciding which organizations can participate in AmazonSmile, he did not commit to cutting ties with the organization.
As for Pittman, he has urged the public to pressure Amazon to “reverse course” on the decision to pull his film from Amazon Prime.
