AMAZON TIMELINE

SEPTEMBER 29th: “What Killed Michael Brown?” was uploaded onto the Amazon Video Direct Platform for review.

OCTOBER 1st: We received notice that the film was not available to be published on October 16th since it had been placed into “content review.” Their general explanation states that a film warrants a review if it has offensive content, illegal and infringing content, public domain content, or poor customer experience offensive content. Our film has not violated any of the above conditions — unless offering a differing cultural viewpoint is offensive.

OCTOBER 2 TO OCTOBER 12: We sent Amazon numerous emails, receiving either generic responses or no responses at all. We still held out hope that this issue would be resolved to each party’s benefit — after all, Amazon takes 50% of the filmmaker’s revenue.

OCTOBER 13 - early evening: Jason Riley publishes his WSJ Op-ed:

OCTOBER 13 - later in the evening: Amazon sends email, rejecting “What Killed Michael Brown?”

OCTOBER 14: WSJ publishes a follow up:

OCTOBER 16: An Amazon rep reaches out to us and here is the following email exchange:

We redacted the name and phone number of the Amazon executive since we do not believe in today’s ugly vice of doxxing people; our issue is not with this individual but with Amazon and its policies.

This outreach by this Amazon executive came as a complete surprise. It is important to note that this email came AFTER Amazon made our film public on their website. Amazon never made any effort to contact us in advance or to ask for our permission to platform our film.

This fact is significant because in Amazon’s October 13th email, they made it unequivocally clear that they rejected our film and went so far as to say that appealing their decision was not a possibility.

As disappointed as we were, we accepted this decision and went elsewhere to show my film and that place was Vimeo. We had lost two weeks waiting for Amazon’s verdict and, in the very limited amount of time before the film’s release on Vimeo on October 16th, we poured all our resources and manpower into making the film’s premiere as successful as possible.

While we were doing this, we had no idea that Amazon had decided to platform our film and make available to the public and at their own price. When Amazon unequivocally rejected our film without opportunity to appeal, they forfeited all rights to access our film. So, the film was put up without our consent. We had to incur the expense of reaching out to a lawyer for advice and he advised us that a cease and desist letter was the best step. We sent that out today (the afternoon of October 18, 2020).

The question here is why did Amazon suddenly reverse its course? What happened prior to October 13th that made Amazon decide to reject our film outright? What happened between October 13th and October 16th that made Amazon reverse its decision? Was it the wave of publicity? We must learn why Amazon chose to reject our film and why they chose to reverse their decision and put our film on their platform without our permission. After all, if this can happen to us, it can happen to anyone of us.

OCTOBER 20th: AMAZON REACHED OUT AND WE REACHED AN UNDERSTANDING — “WHAT KILLED MICHAEL BROWN?” IS NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON.

Amazon reached out to me late this afternoon and we had a positive exchange of emails — I prefer emails to the phone due to my deafness. Apparently, we had an uninvited third party that interfered on my behalf, unbeknownst to me, and that caused confusion. So it was good to communicate with them directly; I listened to their side and they listened to mine. 

They acknowledged what happened and said they would work to improve and prevent incidences like this one from happening again. 

Given today’s volatile culture war, I believe this was a positive step. They will have this experience on their minds going forward and one hopes they will improve their policies so that all American perspectives are included. They certainly did not have to reach out, but they did and that gesture is meaningful. 

I do want to thank the writers at Wall Street Journal, Fox News, National Review, and many other places for writing about this. Without this publicity, we likely would never have reached this resolution. Thank you. 

So, I am very happy that I can finally announce officially that our very well received documentary, “What Killed Michael Brown?”, is now on the Amazon platform!