CNN, a fierce critic of Donald Trump, has turned against Twitter now for not censoring what’s described as US president’s “appalling tweets.”
This newest controversy has to do with Trump’s tweets about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, that apparently suggested Scarborough – a former congressman – might have had something to do with the 2001 death of his 21-year-old intern.
The way Trump did this was suggest to his followers on Twitter to read an article on the website True Pundit that seems to look into this case from an angle accusatory of Scarborough.
CNN calls this “a repugnant conspiracy theory” and notes that originally, claims against Scarborough – a Republican who is now a Trump critic – came from the left-wing of US politics, but were debunked back then.
After citing a number of anti-Trump media outlets and personalities in an article using charged language such as “insane crusade,” “shameful post,” and the like, CNN turned to Twitter, apparently to find out whether Trump’s tweets might be censored on the social media platform. (This has been a long-standing and recurring goal of his political opponents.)
The article’s author says they “inquired about the accusatory tweets” – i.e., whether Trump’s posts break Twitter’s rules.
“We have nothing to share at this time,” a spokeswoman is quoted as telling the network.
However, it’s clear from CNN’s write-up that it believes the social site’s rules have been violated and describes Twitter as remaining silent in the face of what is seen as the president’s unacceptable behavior.
To back this claim up, the author of the piece, Brian Stelter, quoted a report that appeared on CNN Business last summer, looking into what was at the time Twitter’s new policy round what “world leaders” can and cannot post without having disclaimers slapped on their tweets (while leaving those tweets up).
But even though it mentions “world leaders” the main target of this addition to Twitter’s rules was thought to be Trump himself, whose deft use of the social media platform has frustrated his critics and opponents ever since his first presidential campaign.
CNN’s interpretation of what the new Twitter policy meant was then, as it is now, that leaders “would be able to tweet things that are in violation of Twitter’s normal rules but that Twitter would label those tweets.”
And Twitter is yet to “label” any of Trump’s tweets.
