Elon Musk’s battle with the journalists that took place at the end of the week and Washington Post Author Taylor Lorenz was temporarily suspended from Twitter after he asked the billionaire for a comment on an article.
“When I went to sign in and see if he answered our question, I was stopped. I received no communication from the company on why I was fired or what conditions I violated,” Lorenz wrote in his Substack.
Musk said Sunday morning that Lorenz was suspended for “the first act of doxxing by this story” and would be removed “soon.”
But when Lorenz appealed his suspension, he received a response from Twitter saying that his story “stands” and that he should not respond because “this decision will no longer be change”.
A few hours later, Lorenz’s Twitter account was restored.
The suspension comes days after Musk was fired and then retracted by several other prominent journalists who pointed to the story of @elonjet, which is run by a college student who is tracking the performance of his private jet.
It was also followed by a recent criticism of Musk by CEO Ariadna Jacob, who was the subject of an important article by Lorenz and later sued the author for defamation.
Jacob said that Lorenz did it to him in the article, which appeared in it The New York Times when he worked there. In Lorenz’s story, he linked to a public Zillow listing of a co-op house.
“Such outrageous behavior will not be tolerated going forward,” Musk wrote in a response on Friday, a day before Lorenz was suspended from Twitter.
It was condemned by Washington Post chief editor Sally Buzbee, who noticed that the second treasure Post reporter after reporter Drew Harwell was suspended on Thursday.
“The confirmed suspension of another Post writer further undermines Elon Musk’s commitment to running Twitter as a platform for free speech,” Buzbee said in a statement. “And again, the suspension happened without any warning, process or explanation – this time because our reporter just sought an explanation from Musk for a story. It should be returned immediately your press releases, without any special conditions.
The suspension of Lorenz without a clear explanation of his alleged crime has been the subject of recent press bans.
For example, Twitter banned some writers just for linking to @elonjet’s news on Mastodon’s social media platform – which was also banned on Twitter.
“Twitter has become an important source of news and plays an important role in the world of journalism,” wrote Lorenz, “but Musk’s suspension of journalists who report to him should be concerns anyone who values journalism and free expression.”
