Journalist behind Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ condemns his ban of reporters as ‘whims and biases’

Billionaire claimed reporters suspended for ‘doxxing’ his location and ‘endangering’ his family

One of the journalists behind Elon Musk’s “ Twitter Files” projects has condemned the billionaire for running the company with “whims and biases” after he banned a string of journalists.

Mr Musk has drawn widespread criticism for banning the accounts of reporters from CNN, Mashable, The New York Times and The Washington Post after they tweeted about his suspension of the account that tracked his private jet.

Twitter suspended the accounts of prominent liberal journalist Aaron Rupar as well as the likes of Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post and Ryan Mac of The New York Times, all of whom have covered Mr Musk in recent months.

“Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” Mr Musk tweeted on Thursday night.

Now journalist Bari Weiss, who has been given access to internal Twitter documents by Mr Musk for his “Twitter Files” series on how the company was run before he reluctantly bought it for $44bn, has hit out at the Tesla CEO.

“The old regime at Twitter governed by its own whims and biases and it sure looks like the new regime has the same problem,” she tweeted on Friday morning.

“I oppose it in both cases. And I think those journalists who were reporting on a story of public importance should be reinstated.”

And she added that she was “left wondering” if “any unelected individual or clique should have this kind of power over the public conversation.”

Mr Musk took to Twitter to ask the journalist what she would have done in his position.

“What should the consequence of doxxing someone’s real-time, exact location be? Assume your child is at that location, as mine was,” he asked. “Bari, this is a real question, not rhetorical. What is your opinion?”

Mr Musk then fully turned on Weiss for her position on the bans.

“Rather than rigorously pursuing truth, you are virtue-signaling to show that you are ‘good’ in the eyes of media elite to keep one foot in both worlds,” he tweeted.

The first “Twitter Files” was written by Substack journalist Matt Taibbi and focussed on Twitter’s internal discussion over the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election, won by his father Joe Biden.

In her “Twitter Files” instalment, Weiss discussed the platform’s “blacklisting” of right-wing figures, such as Charlie Kirk and Dan Boningo and the LibsOfTikTok account.

Meanwhile, as Mr Musk concentrates his time and emotion on Twitter, major Tesla shareholders have hit out at his stewardship of the electric vehicle company.

Tesla had a market cap of $1.2 trillion at the beginning of the year but has since shed more than $700bn in value, with investors questioning his focus on the company.

Mr Musk has himself sold around $40bn of Tesla shares to help with his purchase of the social media platform, including another $3.6bn earlier this week.

“Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO,” Leo KoGuan, who describes himself as the third largest investor in the company, tweeted on Wednesday. “Tesla needs and deserves to have working full time CEO.”