On Friday, Twitter suspended the @GrabienMedia account after the media and news clipping company shared a video from Fox News featuring Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) talking about vaccines, Ivermectin, and “big pharma.”
Grabien founder Tom Elliott shared the news that the account had been suspended in a tweet from his own account, and included a screenshot that featured the offending tweet and some correspondence from Twitter.
The message informed Grabien that the tweet has to be deleted for “violating the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”
“We require removal of content that may pose a risk to people’s health, including content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information,” it reads.
Elliott told Mediaite that the tweet “obviously didn’t violate any rules” and that they have submitted an appeal.
The tweet is no longer available on the account’s timeline. The screenshot shows that it read: “VIDEO – Rep. Biggs: Big Pharma Won’t Consider Therapeutics Like
The portion of the clip from the Ingraham Angle that was referenced in the tweet is below. Rep. Biggs was speaking with guest host Lisa Boothe about COVID vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.
The full clip is still on the Grabien News website here.
“Obviously, in this case, quoting an elected leader on an issue that matters to everyone is important and newsworthy, regardless of whether you agree,” said Elliott in his tweet thread on the incident, adding parenthetically, “And I can’t help but add that his basic point was once mainstream among progressives.”
Elliott said that he has appealed the decision, though expressed small confidence in the process.
“The tweet so obviously didn’t violate any rules I thought it better to give Twitter an opportunity to admit its mistake,” Grabien’s Elliott told Mediaite. “So far they haven’t responded to the appeal and the account remains suspended.”
“I’d love for Twitter to attempt explaining how quoting an elected official giving his opinion on the pharmaceutical industry violates their rules. Twitter is effectively claiming that accounts engaging in ordinary journalism will be suspended,” he said. “This incident is only the latest example of how speech codes always entail slippery slopes that inevitably result in far more sweeping censorship than originally claimed. In the end, everyone loses.”
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