Newspaper Editor Slams Elon Musk For Fueling ‘Fire Hose of Hatred’ And Death Threats Directed at Its Journalists

zz/Wil R/STAR MAX/IPx 2020 via AP

Glenn Cook, the executive editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, penned a devastating op-ed on Monday detailing a campaign of harassment launched against his paper and its journalist in recent days, which was promoted Sunday by Elon Musk.

“I’ve never seen more dehumanizing vitriol and hostility directed at journalists at any time in my career,” Cook wrote, adding, “And that was before this weekend.”

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest daily paper founded in 1909, has been at the center of a bizarre firestorm of hate from social media users incensed by a month-old headline they claim is proof of media bias and malpractice.

The anger online, which Cook described as being “like a fire hose of hatred to the face,” reached such a fever pitch that even Musk joined the misinformation-based pile-on – as he so often does.

“An innocent man was murdered in cold blood while riding his bicycle. The killers joked about it on social media. Yet, where is the media outrage? Now you begin to understand the lie,” Musk wrote on Twitter, sharing a screenshot of the obituary of retired police chief Andreas Probst from mid-August.

A Twitter fact check cleared up the narrative and explained the reality of the situation. “The screenshot is from an article that was published on August 18, 2023. An article published on August 31 clarified that the driver intentionally hit the cyclist based on video which was only obtained on August 29,” noted the fact check.

Furthermore, the journalist who wrote the initial obituary, Sabrina Schnur, was the one who directed the owner of the video, who reached out to her, showing the killing of the cyclist was intentional to go to the police.

After the police reviewed the video and declared Probst’s death a homicide, the Review-Journal was one of the first publications to cover the story. Since then a 17-year-old has been arrested and charged with Probst’s murder. Cook explains how these tragic events eventually became fodder to attack his paper:

But somehow, someone who watched the video this weekend found one of the Review-Journal’s first reports on Probst’s killing – the Aug. 18 obituary that identified Probst as the victim – and made the false assumption that the story was reported after the video was discovered and after the driver was charged with murder. A social media post was created, accusing the Review-Journal of deliberately characterizing the murder of a retired lawman as a “bike crash,” words from the obituary’s headline.

As the post quickly circulated through the feeds and groups of like-minded media bashers, the narrative worsened. Assumptions were made about the race of the two people in the car. We were far-left, anti-cop, anti-white liars. And a whole lot of other things I can’t write here.

Cook added that “agenda-driven ideologues and even Elon Musk decided to engage in an unfounded media criticism dogpile to keep the outrage roaring.” He noted that as a result of the social media narrative, “Over the past three days, Review-Journal employees’ social media and email accounts have been filled with accusations of every bias you can imagine, obscenities, racist tirades and wishes of personal suffering and death.”

Schnur in particular became a focus of the hate campaign as she received a bevy of online harassment. “Social media users identified Sabrina Schnur, one of the Review-Journal’s best reporters, as the author of the story they were attacking. They filled Twitter/X with comments and tags that ranged from anti-Semitic to death wishes for her and her dog. She had more than 700 notifications of malevolence as of Sunday, and they’re still coming,” Cook explained.

He also noted that this campaign of harassment and intimidation comes just a year after one of the Review-Journal’s top investigative reporters was murdered by an elected official he was investigating.

“Reporters increasingly are navigating heightened risks and hostility everywhere. Americans must understand that unrelenting intimidation, cyber harassment and threats to journalists have dire consequences for a free press and a functioning republic – especially when they are based on lies,” Cook concluded.

Read his full op-ed here.