- The media thinks that people will read an article about "inappropriate" content on YouTube.

- YouTube gets embarrassed and tries to remove inappropriate content.

- The media thinks that people will read an article about "appropriate" content being flagged on YouTube.

I feel like YouTube just made the mistake of jumping onto this never-ending treadmill of trying to please the media.

Of course that isn't the entire problem. They do "need" to remain attractive to advertisers. So demonetization (or at least some "safe for all advertisers flag") needs to exist so that conservative advertisers keep finding the platform attractive. (However I feel the response could have been much finer grained. For example allow advertisers to opt-into different categories of "inappropriate" content. For example some brands have not problems being next to violent content. This way you would still make less money from an "inappropriate" video but you would at least take home something.).