Elon Musk went on a tear and suspended several journalists from Twitter on Thursday night, sending the left into a tailspin. But one journ...
Elon Musk went on a tear and suspended several journalists from Twitter on Thursday night, sending the left into a tailspin. But one journalist in particular ended up making himself look worse for the whole episode.
The social media CEO suspended several left-wing journalists who were using a private jet tracker to tell Twitter users where Musk was in real time, an act that the famous billionaire said put him and his family in danger.
Musk had already suspended the plane tracker’s account, but the journalists were sharing his tracking data from other social media outlets.
Musk had suspended the plane tracker after the data led to a stalker attacking a car containing Musk’s son.
The Tesla chief also asked for help from the public to identify the attacker.
Those suspended included Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell, the New York Times’ Ryan Mac, progressive blogger Aaron Rupar, former sports reporter-turned-bomb-throwing screamer Keith Olbermann and others.
As Musk explained, he took action after his family was “doxed.”
“As I’m sure anyone who has been doxed would agree, you know, showing real-time information about someone’s location is inappropriate and I think everyone on this call would not like that to be done to them,” Musk said to a group of journalists on a conference call with the media.
In any case, the suspensions drove CBS Sports alumnus and sports reporter Jason Kint to his wit’s end. Kint was infuriated after Musk put the journalists on suspension.
Kint, who was not one of those suspended, jumped to his own Twitter account to blast Musk, insisting that the recently ensconced owner of Twitter had better “fix this within the hour.”
Hilariously, he then threatened, “I’ll be on Capitol Hill tomorrow demanding that he be hauled in front of Congress.”
I’m sure everyone is quaking in their boots for Kint’s crusade on Capitol Hill.
Kint tweeted on, accusing Musk of creating new rules, then punishing the journalists in retrospect for violating them.
The sports journalist added that Musk is “leaning into a claimed rule established yesterday – which was his right to establish; it’s a very bad decision to ban press for reporting on it – which is his right; and misrepresenting the facts on it all.”
With all that, Kint was, of course, presenting himself as a supporter of the First Amendment and claiming Musk was a violator of all that is holy by banning journalists and putting a halt to their free speech.
For many free-speech absolutists, Kint may have a point. But the journalist’s own past tweets ended up making him look like a hypocrite instead of a crusader for free speech.
Indeed, when the leftists were running Twitter, Kint was all up in arms against those who criticized the outlet for banning conservative users.
Indeed, Kint was seen tweeting that Twitter was a “private company,” and therefore people should just shut up because they had a right to ban anyone they wanted to ban.
Several Twitter users were quick to bust Kint on his hypocrisy.
“Is this you?” one Twitter user asked in a post containing Kint’s old tweets. “No longer care it’s a private platform? We were all so impressed by your principles.”
Like too many left-wing “journalists,” Kint was all about the freedom of a “private company” to do whatever it wanted to do when Twitter was banning conservative users, including Donald Trump. But his tune was very different when his buddies were suspended. The hypocrisy is thick, indeed.
Musk does have a point, too. When people are using social media as a weapon to actually put people in harm’s way at the hands of lunatics, some limits have to be imposed. And if people were using social media to track down Barack Obama’s children, or any other leftist’s family, they’d be the loudest ones calling for bans to be imposed.
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