CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan Refuses to Remove Flagged Tweet to Regain Twitter Access After Musk Ban: ‘A Bit Absurd’

Although Elon Musk decided, after a Twitter poll, to allow several now infamously but temporarily suspended journalists to return to the platform before the 7-day ban was complete, it doesn’t mean they are necessarily able to use Twitter, explained CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan on Saturday.

Their return is conditional, he said, and depends upon their removing the tweets that were flagged in the first place.

This condition of return is familiar to anyone who follows conservatives or people on the right who have been banned or suspended over the years under the prior regime, something that happened more often in that direction as the Twitter Files have amply demonstrated.

O’Sullivan was one of multiple journalists who were temporarily suspended by Musk’s Twitter, ostensibly under the new policy regarding posting real time flight information, which Musk referred to as “doxxing.”

O’Sullivan explained to anchor Fredricka Whitfield on CNN that the tweet he’s being asked to remove does not do that, however. And rather than deleting the tweet, he is appealing the decision. His implication, and that of the media at large, is that the bans were motivated by bias and malicious intent, and the supposed rules violation was just a fig leaf to enact that vengeance. It’s a familiar argument to those who have heard conservatives and other right-wingers object to bans over the years, usually met with mockery from the left and general indifference from the media.

O’Sullivan said, as several others including Aaron Rupar have in the last 24 hours or so, that the suspensions could have a “chilling effect” on speech on the platform, for fear of running afoul of the whims of management. That too is a familiar argument which has been made often by conservatives and other right-wingers for years, likewise eliciting primarily mocking or indifference from the left or the media.

Fredericka Whitfield: Only. What is Musk saying now? Are you back on or not?

Donie O’Sullivan: It’s a complicated answer, Fred. This is turning to quite a saga. So, Musk a few days ago suspended a number of journalists from national outlets here in the US, including myself, all of whom, we were reporting on Musk and reporting about his kind of obsession with this account that tracks the location of his private jet. We didn’t share his location. We didn’t share where his where he was in that precise moment. But nevertheless, Musk shut us down anyway.

It initially was supposed to be a permanent ban. Then Musk ran an un-scientific poll on his Twitter account and people said, you should leave the journalists back on. And so right now, if you log on to my Twitter account, you can see it. It looks like I’m on the platform, but I’m not actually able to tweet at the moment.

I want to show you what I see when I log in. It’s a demand for us, for me to remove this tweet that says it violated our rules against posting private information. As you can see there, that was a tweet where I was reporting about this ElonJet account. I linked to a another Twitter account which had been banned, which had posted a link to ElonJet. I didn’t post a direct link to ElonJet at all. So right now, unless I agree to remove that tweet at the behest of the billionaire, I won’t be allowed to tweet on the platform.

There is an option to appeal. So that’s what I’m doing and we’ll see what’s happening. My colleague Oliver Darcy has been reporting on this, this morning. And I also spoke to The Washington Post journalist Drew Hammill, whose results have been banned. He, too, I believe, is appealing this. So we’ll see. Well, we’ll see what happens. It’s all getting a bit absurd.

Whitfield: Mm hmm. And so what does this all say about Musk and his idea of free speech and journalism and perhaps the overall future of Twitter?

O’Sullivan: Yeah. You know, obviously, for somebody like me, I have a platform right here on CNN and I can also post other social media platforms. And, you know, I mentioned during the week that it could be concerning for independent or freelance journalist or journalists who cover Musk and other companies like Tesla and SpaceX. And what my colleague Oliver Darcy has reported this afternoon is that that appears to be kind of now what is happening. Another journalist, the Linette Lopez, who has covered Musk for years, had her account suspended and it’s not entirely clear why her account was banned.

So, look, I think this could potentially have a chilling effect on how people report on Musk. But again, Twitter is a private company, Elon Musk can do whatever he wants. He can ban whoever he wants. But it is, of course, somewhat hypocritical of him to, you know, hold up this free speech mantle while also shutting down journalists.

Briefly, I would just mention, to be fair to Musk, you know, the idea of people being able to track your private jet, you know, could be concerning and of course, could be a safety risk. But the kind of mental gymnastics that they’re going through here to shut down reporters who are reporting about it. There’s a lot there. So look and finally, I will say, obviously, ElonJet was using publicly available information to track the whereabouts of its private jets.

It was interesting that O’Sullivan nodded to the idea that, while a high profile ban or suspension can elicit a response that the person has many other outlets from which to speak and is therefore not really censored or cancelled, it’s the people who do not have those options who are more affected, and something like a Twitter suspension or ban can be effectively censorship, in that they lose that platform.

Interesting because that’s, you may have guessed, a familiar argument that conservatives and other right-wingers have been making for years, generally resulting in mockery or indifference from those not on the right.

Watch the clip above, via CNN.