Twitter doesn’t have a monopoly on suspensions in the Muskocalypse, it seems. While newsrooms have suddenly discovered a defense to journalistic free speech on the platform that eluded all of them in October 2020, one newsroom has benched a star Twitter player themselves.

Semafor’s Max Tani has the scoop, which has the appearance of an olive branch whether intentional or not:

News organizations are now considering a range of options to respond, people familiar with their conversations said. They range from pulling coverage from Twitter, as CBS News did briefly in November, to retaliating against Twitter’s advertising business: CNN executives have discussed whether their corporate parent, Warner Media Discovery, would stop its advertising on the platform.

News organizations have also discussed dropping out of the Amplify program, in which they post videos to twitter and share in the revenue, or simply asking their staffers to stop contributing to the service.

NBC News, meanwhile, has responded by benching one of its journalists who has reported on Twitter and been harshly critical of Musk. NBC News temporarily suspended tech reporter Ben Collins from covering Musk on NBC and MSNBC airwaves. According to two sources, the network toldCollins earlier this month that his criticism of Musk, which included mocking the billionaire’s ignorance about the company’s general counsel, was not editorially appropriate. Collins continued to tweet his reporting about Twitter last night about the social network’s ban of journalists.

Collins remains unsuspended and has refrained from doing much tweeting since yesterday, at least of his own observations. He has instead retweeted criticisms of the Muskocalypse from others. As of this writing, Collins’ last direct observation was that Twitter has begun to block links to a start-up competitor, Mastodon, which seems a little pointless:

Twitter is preventing users from linking to their Mastodon accounts.

Mine is at mastodon(.)social/@oneunderscore__ pic.twitter.com/RExqovnfkH

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 16, 2022

Twitter doesn’t block links to Facebook or Truth Social, so why block Mastodon links, assuming this is accurate? It would be yet another example of how Musk has allowed himself to get personal and arbitrarily reactive to criticism in this instance rather than strategically oriented. That’s a mistake for a platform whose value to users is in large part access to breaking news, especially when Mastodon itself seems pointless. (Why not just block the link to the specific Mastodon account allegedly doing the doxxing?) It’s no threat to Twitter, at least not at this stage; Facebook might be a better refuge for these tech reporters, given the audience reach and its established progressive-leaning leadership. Mastodon is where journalists retreat to experience all of the friendliness of an Occupy Wall Street policy meeting.

What led NBC News to suspend Collins over editorially inappropriate commentary? Collins has been slinging snark at Musk for a while, but this may have been the one that stepped over the line — although it’s ten days old and still up:

The scandal here is that Elon Musk discovered who his company's deputy general counsel was six weeks after he purchased it. pic.twitter.com/vGgKrHcOHv

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 7, 2022

“Only discovered this on Sunday” pretty clearly refers to Baker’s status as a figure in the FBI’s Russiagate scandal, not his identity. Collins’ snark on this point unfairly characterizes it as complete ignorance of Baker as GC, which is not exactly reportorial, but it’s not outside the realm of critical ridicule either. If this is what triggered NBC’s response, it seems like small potatoes, especially for a suspension from MSNBC. If this is what it takes to get booted from MSNBC’s air, NBC wouldn’t have anything to broadcast at all.

On the other hand, NBC isn’t the only news org looking to dial down the temperature. Tani reports that the New York Times has also instructed its reporters to stop stoking conflict needlessly:

The New York Times released a statement Thursday evening calling the move “questionable and unfortunate,” and called for the tech company to offer an explanation about the suspension. Privately on Friday, the paper’s leadership asked staff not to fight with Musk on Twitter.

Not a bad policy. Neither is taking a breather on both sides to assess incentives and value. Like it or not, Musk needs the content and the cutting edge value that media orgs provide to salvage his $44 billion investment, and media orgs need the large audience that’s primed for the immediacy of their product. Don’t be surprised to see cooler heads prevail, the penalty box opened, and a better understanding of the boundaries coming out of this brief skirmish.