CNN Unloads On ‘Unhinged’ Elon Musk: Cable News Giant Calls Rebranded Twitter ‘Warped and Disfigured,' Predicts Social Giant Headed for ‘Iceberg-Ridden Waters’ as it Labels its Leader ‘Loathsome’
Is CNN objective? Not when it comes to the news of Twitter’s rebrand to X — nor its “senior media reporter” who shelved impartiality for an epic takedown on Elon Musk, labeling him “unhinged” and a “loathsome leader” who has no chance of steering the social media platform out of its supposed “iceberg-ridden waters.”
RadarOnline.com can report that Oliver Darcy, who CNN declares on its website as a senior media reporter and not a commentator, used the network’s nightly media newsletter, called Reliable Sources, a missive he edits, to shelve any journalistic impartiality to call Twitter — X as it renamed itself — as an “ugly shell of its former self”.
“Twitter, the text-based social media platform that played an outsized role on society by serving as a digital town square, was killed by its unhinged owner Elon Musk on Sunday. It was 17 years old,” wrote Darcy, a self-styled media expert who took leave from the network after its former boss, Chris Licht, called him out for his handling of the Donald Trump town hall.
“A zombie Twitter, known only as X, reluctantly endures. A warped and disfigured platform, X marches on like a White Walker, an ugly shell of its former self under the command of a loathsome leader.
“Whereas Twitter was once a fountain of authoritative information, X is a platform where trolls can pay a small fee to have their ugly content boosted ahead of reputable sources.”
Darcy, a Trump-bashing CNN disciple of the Jeff Zucker era, compared Musk — whose net worth is said to be $236.5 billion — to the former president, who is facing a raft of criminal charges and further indictments.
“In many ways, Musk has done to Twitter what Donald Trump did to the Republican Party: wholly remade it in his own image,” said Darcy.
“At least, with Musk, the deformed entity is getting a different name, one that allows the public to perhaps separate Twitter from what Musk has transformed it into.”
The reporter went on the chronicle the changes 52-year-old Musk has made to the Twitter business since he completed the $44 billion takeover of the once-public company last October.
“X is a platform where journalists are banned and smeared while the most repellant and dishonest voices are elevated,” added Darcy. “X is a platform where the rules are unclear and content moderation is largely an idea of the past.
“X is a platform where the most important and consequential decisions are made on a whim and can happen without any warning.
“And X is a platform where vital infrastructure is crumbling and the most basic of features often fail to function.”
Adding to his savage beatdown, Darcy said: “X might resemble Twitter. It might occupy the same address on the internet that Twitter once did. But make no mistake, it is not the same platform it once was — even as recently as nine months ago, when Musk took over, quickly decapitated the former leadership, and threw the company into chaos and turmoil.
“That platform has ceased to be. It arguably died some time ago, before it was announced to the public by way of a sudden and disorderly rebranding.”
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Twitter had faced a rash of advertiser exits in the wake of his takeover. But in an interview in June, Musk told the Wall Street Journal that he was winning back nearly all of those brands that had left after his takeover of the social-media giant.
He also declared his goal for the platform was to “make it a positive force for civilization.”
But Darcy warned: “X will, of course, inherit all of Twitter's business problems. Musk is the entity that has proven toxic to advertisers and much of the user base, not the widely recognized bird logo. How the billionaire ultimately turns that ship around is unclear, particularly as he faces new competition from Mark Zuckerberg and Threads.
“So far, however, there is little hope Musk will be able to successfully steer the ship out of iceberg-ridden waters,” Darcy concluded. “He is, after all, the captain who led the ship into them — all while manically laughing alongside his inner circle while standing at the wheel.”
In a stunning move on Monday, Musk and Twitter chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino unveiled a logo for the social media platform that featured a white "X" on a black background as a replacement for the familiar blue bird symbol.
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"X is here! Let's do this," tweeted Yaccarino, who also posted a picture of the logo projected on the company's offices in San Francisco.
While the Twitter blue bird is still visible across the platform, Musk bought X.com from his former company, PayPal, in 2017, saying it had "sentimental value".
He co-founded X.com as an online bank in 1999 which later transformed into PayPal. While Twitter's official page on the platform has been renamed as "X", the domain x.com is not active.