NBC News Pulled Reporter Earlier This Month From Elon Musk/Twitter Coverage

Ted Johnson
·1 min read
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As news organizations condemn Elon Musk’s abrupt suspension of journalists from Twitter, a report surfaced that NBC News had earlier this month benched one of its reporters from covering the mercurial billionaire and his platform.

Ben Collins, who covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for the network, was temporarily pulled from Musk coverage for repeatedly posting tweets about the billionaire that violated the newsroom’s social media policies, according to a person familiar with the matter. A number of newsrooms have social media policies that restrict journalists from crossing the line into opinion about the subjects that they cover.

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The move happened before Musk’s decision to sideline a half dozen or more accounts of journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and elsewhere. Some of the reporters had linked to a Mastodon account of @ElonJet, which published data on the movements of Musk’s private jet based on publicly available information. Musk instituted a policy restricting the posting of real-time tracking data, and suspended the account of @ElonJet.

Collins did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Semafor first reported on the NBC News move. Collins did post on Twitter on Thursday evening about the suspensions of journalists from the platform.

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