CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan, one of several journalists suspended by Twitter earlier this week, said it would not give in to requests from Elon Musk’s social media platform to delete a tweet that allegedly violated its “rules against publishing private information”.
O’Sullivan, a technology correspondent for CNN, told host Fredericka Whitfield that she had to agree to act “at the behest of the billionaire” and remove a tweet that reported — but did not directly link to — the since-banned. @ElonJet account that shared publicly available data about Musk’s private jet flights. (You can watch his comments on the network below).
Musk, who shared his displeasure with false claims that journalists had shared their “exact real-time location,” announced the reinstatement of suspended journalists’ accounts following the results of a Twitter poll on Saturday morning.
O’Sullivan – whose tweets are now visible following his “backback” – told Whitfield he could tweet again if he retracted his tweet on the @ElonJet account, which he said he had no intention of do
“There is an appeal option. So that’s what I’m doing and we’ll see what happens…” said O’Sullivan, who added that he believed the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell would appeal a tweet that Twitter said “violated” its rules.
“…Well, we’ll see what happens. It all gets a bit crazy,” O’Sullivan said.
O’Sullivan later added that the suspensions — along with Twitter requiring accounts to remove tweets or challenge the platform’s reported violations to retweets — “could have a chilling effect” on those reporting on Musk.
You can hear more of O’Sullivan’s remarks on CNN below.
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