We watched the Twitter Thursday night actions with a mixture of bemusement and outrage as the nation’s media complex exploded over the “purge” they called journalists. After provoking a response by retweeting information and linking over content that was deemed worthy to be suspended, Elon Musk and Twitter management incited this action. They pushed Musk to do the right thing and are now considered martyrs.
Two realities must be brought into the conversation to calm the high fevers and to counter the panicked voices that are claiming the threat to journalism. We are referring to six people, despite claims that the news is being censored and melodramatic labels such as “Bloody Thursday” being circulated. Most, if not all, of these accounts that were suspended, will be reactivated within a week. They are effectively placed in “time out”, but they are not held hostage to hostile governments.
Another point is that there was no outrage in 2020 when the New York Post was outwardly silenced. It was not just one reporter who was suspended. An entire media outlet was suspended on multiple platforms. Yet, the collective press did not voice opposition to these moves as we are currently hearing. This selective ignorance clearly demonstrates the elitism embedded in legacy media circles. CNN is the best example of it.
My co-worker reported earlier that they held a grudge session over the suspension and Oliver Darcy had enough audacity and dramatics to express concern about what it might all mean for our integrity as journalists. This is “weaponized delusion”, to use some of the hyperbole that the media loves to employ. Darcy has a long history of encouraging suppression, censorship, and elimination of particular voices and outlets.
Darcy was part of the group of journalists who wanted to remove the InfoWars site from YouTube back when Alex Jones was making a stir among its many supporters. Darcy began by targeting individuals who were affiliated with the site in order to have them removed from “proper news” sites. Darcy was not satisfied with the de-platforming of InfoWars by the video site. Jones was apparently still able to promote his broadcast through various outlets so he tried to get Twitter to delete the account. He also reached out to Facebook about the same concerns.
CNN reviewed Jones’ accounts and found that Jones or InfoWars posted all the videos that led other tech companies to take legal action against Jones. All of them were still available on Twitter at the time that this article was written.
Darcy was getting energized by his quest to silence right-leaning targets, but he had to face the fact that he was a journalist. He was subsisting on First Amendment trade and seeking to limit the freedom of expression. He was trying to justify his desire to silence Jones and his outlet in a single report. You can see Ollie trying to address the complaints. “CNN hasn’t called for Jones or InfoWars to be banned from speaking, but has been reporting about social platforms’ stance toward InfoWars, particularly as these platforms claim to be fighting misinformation.” So why doesn’t this Oliver Darcy standard get applied to Thursday’s suspensions? Donie O’Sullivan is not being prevented from speaking by CNN. Twitter took a position towards him.
Darcy, encouraged by the results, continued his attack on the President, declaring that he was basically InfoWars. This helped to justify the removal of Trump from Twitter.
As Oliver Darcy is bemoaning the threat to journalism as a result of one CNN reporter being suspended for 7 days, recall he pushed to have InfoWars deplatformed and then lobbied to classify Trump on the same level.
This was long before Jan. 6. pic.twitter.com/Bg2lSmA06j— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) December 16, 2022
It is quite striking to see Trump’s ultimate expulsion from all social media platforms. Today’s media circus is focusing on the temporary suspension of a few journalists on one platform. But these thinkers were not concerned about the eventual removal of Trump as the leader of the nation from all social media platforms.
Darcy has not slowed down his efforts. He was reaching out to cable companies to resolve the problem of cable channels broadcasting nefarious programs for quite some time. He declared Fox News to be worthy of being removed. Newsmax was also not immune to his accusations. His push for silence was necessary to see OAN removed from Direct TV package packages.
It’s unclear whether Darcy doesn’t see or ignore the fact that his silencing standards can and should be applied to him and his network. He said that Fox’s lies were being propagated by Tucker Carlson, Tucker Hannity, and Mark Levin, which he repeated to the media at the time. The TV companies that broadcast them to millions of homes across the country bear some responsibility.
This is all made more ridiculous when it was revealed that this same man lied about the Twitter Files not showing government involvement. As he lies about how telling a reporter to sit in the corner is worse than having outlets taken down completely, Oliver and CNN are now eligible for removal from our TVs.
It is not me who is calling for this limitation. Oliver Darcy has proven that CNN is able to use his prevarications as a basis for his stark silencing methods.
