NBC News temporarily removed a “disinformation” journalist from his Twitter beat this month after the network deemed his criticism of Twitter CEO Elon Musk inappropriate, according to reports.
On Friday, journalist Max Tani with Semafor first reported the “temporary suspension” that currently prevents “Ben Collins from covering Musk on NBC and MSNBC airwaves.” Citing multiple sources, Tani wrote that the network found the criticism to be “not editorially appropriate.”
As the report noted, on December 6, Collins heckled Musk for failing to realize that Jim Baker, former general counsel, was employed as deputy general counsel at Twitter until after reporter Matt Taibbi’s first “Twitter Files” thread. Baker was then fired, partly because he vetted “the first batch of ‘Twitter Files’ without knowledge of new management,” as Taibbi noted:
“The scandal here is that Elon Musk discovered who his company’s deputy general counsel was six weeks after he purchased it,” Collins wrote, mocking Musk.
Variety’s Brian Steinberg soon followed up with his own report, in which a lone source said Collins was booted from Twitter and Musk coverage. Collins, who has also previously voiced his disdain for Breitbart News, “remains on staff” and was reportedly warned multiple times “about his commentary” regarding the billionaire and social media platform, per Steinberg.
Days after the horrific shooting at the Colorado Springs gay nightclub Club Q last month, where a gunman killed five and injured dozens more, Collins appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, claiming “that ‘Republican politicians’ and the ‘internet’s far-right machine’ were targeting transgender people,” leading to the shooting, as Breitbart News’s Pam Key reported. He then invoked Breitbart News specifically:
But I think we have to have a come-to-Jesus moment here as reporters. Are we more afraid of being on Breitbart for saying that trans people deserve to be alive, or are we more afraid of the dead people? Because I’m more afraid of the dead people. I don’t want to wake up on a Sunday and see that all of these headlines came to fruition.
Reports of Collins’ punishment come the day after Musk suspended a number of journalists and commentators, including reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, and Vox, allegedly breaching Twitter’s Terms of Service, which were edited on Wednesday.
“Twitter suspended the accounts that tweeted public tracking information of Musk’s private jet, violating the platform’s rules, which were updated Wednesday,” as Breitbart News reported.
Collins, who reports on “disinformation, extremism and the internet,” covered the establishment suspensions on Twitter Thursday despite reportedly being barred from covering the site at NBC News.