Democrats criticize Elon Musk for suspending journalists covering Twitter

By: Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell 

Several Democratic members of Congress expressed outrage Thursday night after Twitter suspended the accounts of several reporters who cover the company or its owner, Elon Musk, including our colleague Drew Harwell.

Musk has cast his ownership of Twitter as part of a larger fight over free speech:

Now he’s suspending the accounts of journalists.

Twitter on Wednesday suspended an account that used publicly available data to track Musk’s private jet. In a tweet Thursday night, Musk accused the reporters who covered the decision “of posting ‘assassination coordinates’ that endangered him and his family,” our colleague Paul Farhi reports. But Paul writes “The Post has seen no evidence that any of the reporters did so.”

Democrats including Reps. Dean Phillips (Minn.), Lori Trahan (Mass.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) criticized Twitter. Republican lawmakers, many of whom have embraced how Musk is running Twitter, remained mostly silent.

“The suspension of Drew Harwell’s Twitter account directly undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech,” Sally Buzbee, The Post’s executive editor, said in a statement. “Harwell was banished from Twitter without warning, process or explanation, following the publication of his accurate reporting about Musk. Our journalist should be reinstated immediately.”

Since taking over Twitter, Musk has seemed most intent on stirring controversy around the company, which he has described as being in dire financial condition, and inflaming partisan tensions on the platform.

He recently provided two writers with internal company communications from when it was run by the previous management, which reignited conservatives’ anger over the decision to restrict sharing of a controversial New York Post story about President’s Biden’s son Hunter ahead of the 2020. It also renewed charges that the previous management had “shadow banned” the accounts of some conservatives. (Twitter had defended the practice as “visibility filtering,” a moderation tool in which the company blocked some users’ tweets from appearing in search results or recommendations without telling them.)