YouTube has removed a video by Tim Pool, a popular and award winning journalist, that criticized the mainstream media for falling for a 4Chan hoax that claimed the Florida school shooter was part of a white nationalist group.

Youtube just removed my video criticizing the media for the Florida Suspect hoax and gave me a strike. Wtf? pic.twitter.com/fgzbWtzwbO — Tim Pool (@Timcast) February 17, 2018

On Thursday afternoon, the Anti-Defamation League reported that the white supremacist group Republic of Florida (ROF) had claimed the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, as one of their members. Countless news outlets and personalities ran with this story based on their assertion.

It was soon revealed, however, that the report was part of an elaborate 4Chan hoax to feed the media fake news. Still, many outlets continued to report on this story as factual despite denials from law enforcement that he had ties to the group.

4chan has proven time and time again it can easily manipulate the press. Journalists need to get their heads of their asses and stop falling for this kind of shit. Maybe it would have been prudent to wait for law-enforcement confirmation or comment before reporting the hoax. — Tim Pool (@Timcast) February 15, 2018

TRENDING: Crowd Begins Chanting "Fill The Seat" at Trump Rally in North Carolina - President Trump Announces He Will Name Nominee this Week - A WOMAN

Several outlets, including the Associated Press, have had to issue corrections following the widespread false reporting.

White nationalist appears to have lied to the AP, other news outlets when he claimed that Florida school-shooting suspect was a member of his group. https://t.co/E09NtwL5qF — The Associated Press (@AP) February 17, 2018

In a video commenting about the debacle, Pool asserted that it was a “major media failure.

Though Pool was critical of the sloppy mistake, he did concede that mistakes happen and that all this means is people should fact check their news, even if it is coming from an outlet like the Associated Press that is generally reputable.

“This is a seriously stupid mistake, somebody jumped the gun. This should not have happened and it shouldn’t happen again, but I know it will,” Pool said in the video. “Let me just say before I close this out that there are a lot of journalists who do good work and simply because we see these big screw ups doesn’t mean that the bulk of journalism coming from the AP and other news organizations is bad.”

Pool added, “it’s impossible for a news organization to be 100% accurate all of the time.”

Pool’s video can still be viewed on BitChute.

https://t.co/z8OlT2LEGN is great. Youtube falsely removed my video criticizing the media for reporting a hoax, that even the AP eventually corrected, and it is still available as a back up on Bitchute.https://t.co/nu7ysgOJmz — Tim Pool (@Timcast) February 17, 2018

The video sharing platform claimed that Pool’s video was flagged by other users for review, and “upon review” they determined that it violated their guidelines. In addition to removing the video, YouTube gave Pool a temporary strike to his account, which will prevent him from being able to livestream, for three months.

“I think this is a case of people mass flagging my video and then YouTube not actually reviewing it just removing it. I highly doubt YouTube was protecting a white nationalist who presumably lied to the press from harassment. But to be clear, nothing I said in that video constitutes a violation of the community guidelines or harassment and anyway,” Pool told the Gateway Pundit.

Pool, who has previously worked for Fusion and Vice, has never received any strikes on his account in the past.

“I have never had a strike on any video I have ever made at any company I have ever worked for,” Pool told Gateway. “The video is not necessarily deleted, it’s blocked. Hopefully they will review my appeal and reinstate the video.”

Pool has reached out to YouTube to attempt to get the video reinstated and the strike removed.