OFF THE AIR

NBC News Suspends Reporter Ben Collins for Criticizing Elon Musk

The reporter has continued to tweet about Musk’s recent efforts to suspend journalists who have been critical of him.

NBC News has suspended reporter Ben Collins from appearing on NBC and MSNBC following his critical tweets about Elon Musk, including one in which he mocked the Twitter CEO for only discovering “who his company’s deputy general counsel was six weeks after he purchased it.” A source familiar with the decision told The Daily Beast that the decision was made to remove him from the air earlier this month. Collins, a former Daily Beast editor and reporter who made news last month when he called on fellow journalists to have a “come-to-Jesus moment” following the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado, has been among those at the forefront of reporting on Musk’s moves to permanently suspend the Twitter accounts of media figures who have criticized him on the platform, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, and the popular independent journalist Aaron Rupar. Those reporters were given no explanation other than being told they had violated unspecified Twitter rules.