CNN panel seethes over Musk not giving them Twitter Files: 'Not in the spirit of free speech'
CNN reporter Oliver Darcy trashed Elon Musk’s "Twitter Files" drop on CNN Thursday morning, reiterating claims they provide "no evidence" that Twitter worked with the government.
CNN has dedicated minimal coverage to Elon Musk's Twitter Files that have shed light on the controversial actions the tech giant made before the Tesla billionaire took over.
Of the seven on-air segments that have aired since journalist Matt Taibbi went viral with the first installment of the Twitter Files on Dec. 2, they largely attempted to downplay what was reported. CNN business correspondent Christine Romans suggested Twitter's efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election was not actually about censorship and that Twitter simply aimed to be a "real arbiter of real information" and that the findings should be classified under "m for meh." She also attempted to characterize Taibbi by saying he, like Musk, is "another voice" rather than a journalist who has "disdained the mainstream media before." CNN tech reporter Brian Fung labeled Bari Weiss, editor of The Free Press who has also reported on the Twitter Files, a "former conservative columnist" while summarizing her findings.
CNN correspondent Donie O'Sullivan suggested the framing that conservatives were targeted by Twitter based on what was revealed in the Twitter Files is "selective" and even argued "people who have worked at Twitter at the time" would say action taken against users "who happen to be Republicans" were "often people sharing misinformation, disinformation or hate." O'Sullivan also attempted to frame the revelations as something "we actually knew about for the past few years" and are not "brand new."
On Thursday, O'Sullivan and CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy appeared on "CNN This Morning" to help CNN "examine the truth behind the ‘Twitter Files,'" particularly over Twitter's censorship of the Hunter Biden scandal.
Darcy prefaced the conversation by stressing how former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has already admitted it was a mistake for his company to censor the New York Post's reporting and summarized what was shared in the first installment of the Twitter Files was the "messy content moderation that was happening behind the scenes."
"I will say on this specific Twitter Files drop, I thought what was really noteworthy was that Elon Musk's hand-picked reporter Matt Taibbi said that there was no evidence of government involvement in trying to suppress this story and that was a big claim that Elon Musk had made earlier when he was hyping these Twitter Files. I think that’s very important to point out here," Darcy said.
"CNN This Morning" addressed the findings from Elon Musk's Twitter Files but had glaring omissions during the on-air discussion. (Screenshot/CNN)
Well, what Darcy's comments failed to address was the important context surrounding Taibbi's reporting.
Taibbi initially reported "Although several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story."
However, what Darcy did not mention to CNN viewers is that the first batch of Twitter Files were vetted without Musk's knowledge by Twitter's then-deputy general counsel Jim Baker, a former general counsel for the FBI and a former CNN legal analyst. Baker was subsequently fired by Musk.
So it is unclear whether Baker's involvement in vetting the Twitter Files led Taibbi to draw that conclusion and whether Baker omitted files that would have shown the federal government intervening in Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. What is clear is that Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, meet weekly with the FBI, DHS as well as the office of the DNI throughout the 2020 election.
Throughout CNN's coverage of the Twitter Files, Baker's involvement in the Twitter Files was mentioned once, when citing Taibbi's reporting showing he was supporting of censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story despite any definitive evidence that it violated Twitter's "hacked materials" policy. CNN anchor Erin Burnett did not disclose to viewers that Baker was a former CNN legal analyst. Baker's firing did not receive any coverage on CNN, according to Grabien transcripts.
Before joining Twitter as its deputy general counsel in 2020, Jim Baker was a CNN legal analyst following his stint as a top lawyer for the FBI. (Screenshot/CNN)
"CNN This Morning" co-host Don Lemon offered a frank assessment of the Twitter Files, telling Darcy and O'Sullivan "I honestly don't care," dismissing alleged suppression by pointing to the "loudest, craziest voices on Twitter who are not suppressed."
"Listen, no one has a right to be on Twitter, ok?" Lemon said. "You could be on Twitter or not be on Twitter. It's a private company. And, you know, they can set the rules that they want to set. I just feel like especially this whole Hunter Biden thing, it's like a Rorschach test for political like which side would you believe politically. So for me, it doesn't interest me in that way. But that's me being- I'm selfish."
Darcy went on to accuse Musk of being a "gatekeeper" of the Twitter Files, saying he's "not giving it to newsrooms" but rather "hand-picked journalists" instead.
But perhaps the biggest omission in CNN's coverage of the Twitter Files is the fact that CNN itself suppressed the Hunter Biden scandal during the 2020 election.
Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" have shed light on the tech company's controversial actions before his $44 billion-dollar takeover. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto, CARINA JOHANSEN/NTB/AFP via Getty Images (Photo illustration))
CNN was caught spiking the laptop story when it first broke, according to recordings obtained by Project Veritas that were released in December 2020.
"Obviously, we're not going with the New York Post story right now on Hunter Biden," CNN political director David Chalian said during a conference call on Oct. 14, the same day the Post published its first story on Hunter Biden's emails. Chalian later insisted the report was "giving its marching orders" to the "right-wing echo chamber about what to talk about today."
"The Trump media, you know, moves immediately from – OK, well, never mind – the [Michael Flynn] unmasking was, you know, found to be completely nonsensical to the latest alleged scandal and expects everybody to just follow suit," then-CNN president Jeff Zucker told his staff on Oct. 16. "So, I don't think that we should be repeating unsubstantiated smears just because the right-wing media suggests that we should."
Such attitudes were translated by some of CNN's biggest talents.
"Bakari, the right wing is going crazy with all sorts of allegations about Biden and his family. Too disgusting to even repeat here," CNN anchor Jake Tapper told his Democratic colleague Bakari Sellers in October 2020. "I mean, some of the ones I've seen from the president's son and some of the president's supporters are just wildly unhinged."
"Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter attempted to cast doubt on the Post's reporting by stressing the involvement of Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani, as well as questioning the legitimacy of John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware computer repair store owner who first obtained Hunter Biden's laptop.
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"There's a lot about this story that does not add up," Stelter told his viewers at the time. "And, I mean, for all we know, these emails were made up, or maybe some are real and some are fakes, we don't know. But we do know that this is a classic example of the right-wing media machine."
CNN ultimately authenticated emails from Hunter Biden's laptop in a report about his finances in July 2022.
Fox News Digital asked CNN whether the network should have disclosed to viewers it had suppressed the Hunter Biden story in 2020. Fox News also asked whether CNN should disclose Jim Baker's ties to the network and whether the network should inform its viewers about his firing from Twitter. CNN did not immediately respond for comment.
CNN, like Twitter, suppresed the New York Post's bombshell reporting about Hunter Biden's laptop during the 2020 presidential election. (Getty images | New York Post)
Matt Taibbi went viral with the first installment of the Twitter Files which focused on Twitter's internal discussions leading to it censoring the Hunter Biden scandal with some officials struggling to explain how it violated its "hacked materials" policies.
The second installment published by Bari Weiss revealed Twitter's "blacklisting" of prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.
Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular account Libs of TikTok never violated its "hateful conduct" policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so.
The third, fourth and fifth installments of the "Twitter Files" focused on the permanent suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot events in January 2021.
Taibbi reported how Twitter circulated election-related tweets from various users leading up to the 2020 election that were "flagged" by the FBI as being problematic.
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Independent writer Michael Shellenberger revealed that Dorsey was phoning it in as he was on vacation while his deputies were pushing to deplatform Trump with Roth in particularly spearheading efforts to censor other users pertaining to tweets about the 2020 election.
On Monday, Weiss delved into the pressure Twitter management was facing from its employees who called for Trump's permanent suspension, though the Free Press editor also revealed several Twitter staffers who enforce policies did not believe Trump's tweets from Jan. 6 actually violated its rules.
However, it was Vijaya Gadde, then-Twitter's head legal chief, who asked if Trump's tweets could be "coded incitement to further violence." Moments later, the so-called "scaled enforcement team" suggested that based on how Twitter interprets Trump's tweets, it could violate the violence incitement policies.
Musk had been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter's past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content.