On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains the dangerous, chilling effect Musk has had on the news media

Written by Media Matters Staff

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From the December 17, 2022, edition of MSNBC's American Voices with Alicia Menendez

ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): Twitter CEO Elon Musk has reinstated the accounts of several top tech journalists after widespread outrage over their suspension. Musk claims the reporters were removed from Twitter for posting the location of his private jet. Now, to be clear, that flight information was publicly available and some suspended journalists say they never shared it. 

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MENENDEZ: Musk’s suspension spree may have allowed him to feel safer on Twitter. His leadership has made the social media site more dangerous for marginalized groups. Musk disbanded the Twitter committee monitoring hate speech, and as a result, use of slurs on Twitter has soared. Center for Countering Digital Hate found daily tweets mentioning the n-word up by more than 200%. Joining me now, the head of another nonprofit tracking Twitter’s transformation, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone. Angelo, I mean, Twitter has more users than the entire population of the United States. I wonder what you think is at stake when you have Elon Musk censoring journalists?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, I mean I think there’s a couple things here. One is that there are a lot of people that don't use Twitter. That's fair. 

MENENDEZ: Right. Yes.

CARUSONE: But as you know, there are a lot of people that do. And the information landscape is an ecosystem. So even if you don't use Twitter or care about it, it has an effect. And one of the reasons it’s so influential, aside from the fact that many local governments use it to communicate with people in real time, is journalists, is news media. It is kind of like not just a news room where discussions, ideas, germinate, incubate, stories evolve, but it's actually a place where journalists actually have a little bit of power, independent from their medium. Right, so they have the publications or news outlets that they work for, but they also have their Twitter accounts. And their Twitter accounts not just give them information, but they’re actually a separate platform that can sometimes be used as part of their day-to-day professional responsibilities, but also they just enrich the conversation. 

And so, when you go after journalists specifically on Twitter, it obviously has an effect on those individuals directly. But then there's a broader spillover effect, which is that it starts to make what used to be a pretty influential platform for the way in which the news media works -- it’s kind of like grease on the wheels of how information moves around -- it starts to disrupt that. That machine starts to break or become less reliable. And that has downstream effects. So, those individual journalists get affected. It will have a chilling effect. It will start to get in the heads of individuals whether or not the thing they're about to tweet or say is going to get them retaliation. Is it worth it this time? I don't know, I have another big story coming out. Do I really want to lose my account right now? So it will have a direct effect that way. But it also has a broader spillover effect because it further disrupts and dismantles a really important piece of our larger information ecosystem.