CNN's Donie O'Sullivan explains why Musk banned him from Twitter
Austin tonight, Elon Musk banning multiple tech journalists from Twitter with no explanation. The suspensions come just hours after Twitter shut down an account belonging to an emerging competitor, Mastodon. The ban includes The New York Times’s Ryan Mack, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, and our own CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan. Here with me to talk about all this, we have John Berman. Also Tony O’Sullivan and CNN’s Oliver Dorsey. What did you do that was so bad, Tony? We reported on Elon Musk. We were talking about the world’s well, formally the world’s richest man, world’s second richest man who
runs Twitter. He has taken particular a hybrid. Yes. He’s been annoyed that there has been this account, which has been active for years now, which tracks the movements of his private jet. Right. But you’re not doing that. Why didn’t you get banned? So we reported how yesterday he shut that account down. And tonight we continued to report on it. He is claiming on social media that I and other journalists shared the precise live location of his jets. And therefore, that’s why he kicked us off, because we cause danger to him. Certainly my case, I didn’t
we we just posted stories about what was happening, him shutting down those accounts. But, look, I think the bigger issue here is, of course, this is supposed to be
There’s a word for that democracy. It might be called hypocrisy. Yeah. Look, first of all, Elon Musk’s understanding of freedom of speech has always been somewhat limited. There’s no constitutional freedom of speech for a private company. Never has been. And as far as I know, there never will be. So his criticisms of Twitter from before were off base It’s his company. I mean, he can ban Dhoni if he wants to. It’s just wildly hypocritical. Oliver, what is CNN going to do about this? Well, I think this raises a big question about what the free press,
what the future of the free press on Twitter looks like. You know, our news organizations are going to stand by as the reporters are just you know, hastily banned without explanation. CNN is saying it’s going to reevaluate its relationship with Twitter based on the response it gets. I want to read you the full statement Alison. It says, The impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising. And it goes on to say, Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility, volatility should have should be of incredible concern for everyone
who uses Twitter. And then it goes on to say, we have asked Twitter for an explanation and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response. And I think it’s so important to point out that Twitter really needs are really relies on news. I mean, that’s what’s kind of the lifeblood of journalists. I mean, they’re all on Twitter. And so if you see news organizations start to pull their reporters, pull their brand accounts, pull their content off of Twitter, you know, that’s going to be a real blow to the platform and make it less usable
I think, for the average person doing my job here. And to play devil’s advocate against myself, I guess. Look, when Trump got suspended, everybody pointed out that that was also, you know, a concerning thing for many people kicking off the then president of the United States, regardless of the circumstances. But, you know, I have a platform. I’m here talking to you on CNN. There are other social media platforms. The First Amendment, despite what Musk and a lot of his supporters say, does not actually apply to Twitter. I think what is more concerning here, though, is
independent journalist, freelance journalist all around the world, many of whom are covering maybe abuses and ongoing, that Musk’s other companies Tesla Space X, think about the chilling effect that might have because as Oliver said, many journalists rely on Twitter to get their work out there, particularly if they are independent freelancers. But furthermore, one of the things that I think where the hypocrisy comes in is that a lot of people felt that hateful, vitriolic, violent speech shouldn’t be allowed on there because of personal safety. Elon Musk doesn’t want his personal safety violated. I mean, that’s what
it comes down to. He doesn’t want people to know where he is. It’s not personal safety when it’s about him. He doesn’t like it so much. Look, I I said this before you. Elon Musk is a very successful businessman. He’s a rich guy. He’s a rich guy who bought a media company. But because he bought a media company doesn’t mean he understands a thing about the media business or about how this all works. And I think he’s just proving that again and again and again. If I basically think we should say that he is actively
smearing people like don’t saying that they effectively posted assassination coordinates on him for reporting on this Elon jet account, that’s obviously not true. Totally false. But that’s why you’re hearing him say on Twitter tonight. Also, the location of his address is publicly available information. Yeah. Wow. I mean, that again, it’s all been right. Don’t you have to be careful? Always bring us down with you here. I always thought I get banned for my bad jokes. But no, that really adds another wrinkle to it. Gentlemen, thank you very much.
