CNN reporter Oliver Darcy trashed Elon Musk’s "Twitter Files" drop on Thursday morning, reiterating claims the revelations provide "no evidence" that Twitter worked with the government to censor certain stories, and blasted the new Twitter owner for not allowing newsrooms, like CNN’s, to have access to the internal company documents.
After hearing this point, CNN anchor Don Lemon insisted, "That’s not in the spirit of free speech."
Darcy’s comments came during a "CNN This Morning" panel discussion about the Twitter Files. The Files are collection of Twitter threads posted by independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss over the last two weeks providing documentation of how Twitter censored conservatives and the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 presidential election.
Some of the bombshell revelations in these files were that prominent Democrats and Republicans could request Twitter to censor their political opponents, which Twitter did on multiple occasions. Since Twitter staff leaned liberal, liberal requests against conservatives were the majority fielded.
In addition, the Files showed that high-level Twitter decision makers, including former Twitter head of trust and safety Yoel Roth, met with U.S. law enforcement officials for advice on content moderation. The threads revealed that ultimately Twitter’s content moderators censored the Hunter Biden laptop story to avoid a repeat of the "lessons of 2016."
The Files showed that Twitter staff also exceeded their policy while banning Trump’s account, not removing him because of his tweets – which was the rule – but removing him because of the context around his actions during his time as president.
Despite all these points, Darcy downplayed the significance of the revelations, reminding the panel that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey already performed his mea culpas for the censorship of the New York Post story, and that the files just revealed staff just engaging in normal debate over "complex decisions."
He said, "Well I think one, we need to first say that Jack Dorsey admitted that suppressing the New York Post story was a ‘mistake.’ So that, he did last year."
Though the reporter did admit that the Twitter Files showed the "messy content moderation that was happening behind the scenes." He said, "We’re seeing – and it’s probably no surprise – we’re seeing that not everyone agrees, or is on the same page when they’re making these complex decisions."
He then referenced one of Taibbi’s tweets in the first Twitter Files thread to discredit Musk and other conservatives’ interpretation of the revelations. He said, "I will say on this specific Twitter Files drop, I thought what was really noteworthy was that Elon Musk’ handpicked reporter Matt Taibbi said that there was no evidence of government involvement in trying to suppress the story."
Darcy added, "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."
Elsewhere in the segment, Darcy called out Musk for not giving mainstream media outlets access to the Twitter Files. Mentioning his fellow CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan, who was part of the panel, Darcy said, "I think Donie and I would have loved to receive a cache of files exposing or revealing –" He was interrupted by the panel finding the comment amusing.
He continued, saying, "The problem here though is that Elon Musk is effectively acting like a gatekeeper for this information, he is not giving it to newsrooms. He is giving it to handpicked journalists who are then agreeing to the condition – at least one condition of tweeting out the files instead of posting them in news stories."
Lemon then chimed in, saying, "That’s not the spirit of free speech." The panel agreed.
