A CNN correspondent whose Twitter account was suspended this week is rebutting Elon Musk’s explanation for the move, suggesting instead that he was targeted for his reporting on the CEO and his company.
During an appearance Friday on “CNN This Morning,” Donie O’Sullivan said the claim that he and other journalists had reported Musk’s exact real-time location, therefore breaking the platform’s newly updated rules, does not stand up to scrutiny.
“That’s just entirely false,” said O’Sullivan, who has written about the chaos at the company since Musk’s takeover in October.
When asked what he believed to be the true reason for the suspension, he said, “I poked the billionaire.”
O’Sullivan was among multiple journalists whose accounts were restricted Thursday, including The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, Mashable’s Matt Binder and independent journalist Aaron Rupar.
The CNN correspondent stated that he had spent the day reporting on Twitter’s decision to restrict the @ElonJet account, which tracks Musk’s private jet using publicly available information. He said he found out his account was suspended through a colleague later that evening.
O’Sullivan acknowledged that Twitter is a private company and is therefore allowed to take such action. But he argued that this week’s suspensions directly contradict Musk’s stated goal for the platform to champion free speech.
“Coming from the guy who’s the free speech absolutist, who says he wants this to be a beacon of free expression, it is quite something to see him banning journalists who all just happen to cover him critically but I would also say fairly,” O’Sullivan said.
In a statement, CNN called O’Sullivan’s suspension “concerning” and pledged to review its relationship with Twitter going forward.
Twitter also suspended the account of Mastodon, a social media platform seen by some users as an alternative to Musk’s site following his takeover.