Elon Musk caused a meltdown among the journalists who are part of the corporate media when he suspended a few of them from Twitter on Thursday after they violated the platform’s terms of service by “doxxing” him — that is, posting details about his location in a threatening way.
Those suspended included former Vox writer Aaron Rupar, CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan, New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell, and even the pitiful former ESPN and MSNBC figure Keith Olbermann.
Even though the corporate media has shown virtually no interest in the bombshell reporting of the “Twitter Files” detailing deep state collusion with the platform to censor conservative voices, major outlets responded to the suspensions with outrage.
Before Musk took over Twitter by laying out $44 billion in cash to buy the company, it was commonplace for the platform to ban accounts owned by journalists reporting truthful facts.
To recap:@elonmusk put a handful of journalists in time out, and then all their friends started throwing tantrums about it
— Michael Malice (@michaelmalice) December 17, 2022
A two day suspension of maybe 7 accounts for doxxing got an actual Wikipedia page!? Wikipedia is controlled by the MSM journalists. Can’t trust that site anymore.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2022
The New York Post was suspended in the lead-in to the 2020 presidential election for accurately reporting the details of the infamous abandoned Hunter Biden laptop. Twitter also suspended Federalist editor John Daniel Davidson in March for daring to correctly observe that Rachel Levine is a male.
Those previous suspensions were politically motivated, as the disfavored reporting either endangered Democratic candidates’ chances of winning elections or was embarrassing to powerful government officials. In contrast, last week’s suspensions were based on actual rules violations.
“Establishment conservative” commentators have also rushed in to defend their leftist comrades. National Review editor Philip Klein wrote, “As hypocritical as it may be for leftist journalists to whine about arbitrary Twitter suspensions, what Musk is doing here is also hypocritical.”
Manhattan Institute member Chris Rufo agreed that “doxxing” should be prohibited but criticized Musk’s act of defending himself by saying it “should be a clear policy, not a changing standard.”
Ben Shapiro, Charles Cooke, and even “Twitter Files” writer Bari Weiss also criticized Musk for last week’s suspensions.
Musk’s “non-leftist” detractors fail to grasp the danger of giving progressives and Democrats the benefit of the doubt. Democrats never, ever, give the right any credit when they attempt to be fair and always use powerful institutions to smash their political enemies when given half a chance.
