NBC News has suspended Senior reporter Ben Collins over his “editorially inappropriate” coverage of Elon Musk, according to a new report.
The reporter was temporarily suspended from appearing on NBC and MSNBC earlier this month.
“NBC News had already benched one of the journalists who has reported on Twitter and been harshly critical of Musk,” Semafor reported. “According to two sources, the network told Collins earlier this month that his criticism of Musk, which included comments about how the billionaire was purposefully trying to destroy Twitter, was not editorially appropriate. Collins continued to tweet his reporting about Twitter last night about the social network’s ban of journalists.”
Collins’ Twitter account is currently set to private.
His most recent tweet promotes his alternative social media accounts, which is against Twitter’s new policies prohibiting promoting the platform’s competitors.
Another tweet said that he was in the process of moving over to Mastadon, a Twitter alternative that has been popular with liberals looking to flee the platform after Musk’s takeover.
Collins was also fiercely critical of Matt Taibbi after he began releasing the Twitter files, which gave insight into the censorship of conservatives and the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was happening under the platform’s former leadership.
“Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world. Humiliating sh-t,” he tweeted.
When asked about the suspension, an NBC News spokesperson told The New York Post, “We don’t comment on personnel matters.”
“A source close to the situation told The Post that Collins, who has more than 380,000 Twitter followers, was repeatedly warned by management at NBC News over opinionated tweets about Musk,” the Post reports. “The source said Collins was reminded of the company’s journalistic guidelines that bar reporters from expressing their personal views on topics they are assigned to cover.”
The report added, “while Collins is sidelined, he will not be permitted to report on Twitter or Musk across NBC platforms including the over-the-air network, cable news outlet MSNBC, and NBC News’ online site and social media handles, the source told The Post.”
It is unclear when Collins’ suspension will end. A source told the Post that “there is no timeline.”
