CNN reporter calls for Twitter to take censorship further, label Trump's account as disinformation

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Big Tech has been widely criticized for censoring conservatives and an overall liberal bias, but a hyper-partisan CNN reporter wants the social media platform to take censorship even further and slap labels on specific accounts.

CNN media pundit Oliver Darcy, who regularly urges social media companies to de-platform people he disagrees with, wrote in CNN’s media newsletter that Twitter needs to take significant steps to prevent President Trump from sharing misleading information.

“Nearly every tweet from the president at this point is labeled for misinfo. Which had me thinking,” Darcy wrote. “Why doesn't Twitter just take the step of labeling his entire account as a known source of election disinfo? And why stop there? Why not label accounts that repeatedly spread claims the platform has to fact-check?”

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CNN's Oliver Darcy urged Twitter to label accounts that repeatedly spread claims the platform has to fact-check.

Darcy then suggested the hypothetical move would “help users weed out reliable sources from bad-faith actors,” specifically from verified accounts.

“Think of it as a version of NewsGuard for Twitter,” Darcy wrote, referring to the website that rates websites based on standards of credibility and transparency.

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Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor doesn’t think other censorship advocates will be satisfied with Darcy’s suggestion.

“CNN and the rest of the leftist media won't be happy until they silence any voice that dares disagree with them. Labeling accounts won't be considered strong enough by liberals in the press. Then they will want so-called ‘misinformation’ accounts limited and then shut down altogether,” Gainor told Fox News.

“If we actually labeled disinformation accounts, we'd have to hit most traditional media outlets, especially CNN,” Gainor said before noting a 2017 incident when three CNN journalists who worked on a since-retracted story about Russia and a top Trump adviser left the network. Gainor feels that CNN’s account would have a label if Darcy’s suggestion was implemented by Twitter.

“They pushed the bogus Russian conspiracy narrative to the point where CNN had to let go of three editorial employees,” Gainor said. “Journalists have become some of the worst censors on the internet – but only of conservative content.”

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Darcy was once considered a rising star of conservative media and was even named to Red Alert Politics “30 Under 30” list of young, right-leaning leaders back in 2013. He began his career making online videos that exposed hypocrisy among liberal college students and eventually landed at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze. In 2017, Darcy joined CNN as part of Brian Stelter’s team of liberal media pundits and his public views quickly changed to mirror his far-left employer.

CNN’s Jake Tapper seems to agree with Darcy and tweeted on Monday that the problem isn’t Twitter bias, but “it’s Trump lying.”

Meanwhile, Twitter has regularly labeled Trump tweets that feature disputed claims but the social media giant hasn’t taken the same approach with others. Journalist Jeryl Bier noticed that a claim from a Chinese government spokesperson was recently condemned as false but managed to avoid Twitter’s label.

“So @Twitter can label a @realDonaldTrump tweet as suspect within minutes, but 14+ hours later, an official ‘China Government Account’ with a fake photo of a soldier executing a child is still up and unlabeled,” Bier wrote.

Last month Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey struggled to name a single liberal person or entity who has been censored by their social media platforms during a Senate hearing on Big Tech. 

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Twitter and Facebook have both been accused of bias against conservatives, so Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, asked Zuckerberg and Dorsey to name “one high-profile person or entity from a liberal ideology” who has been censored or had actions taken against them.  

The Twitter honcho could not name an example off the top of his head.