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Twitter reinstates journalist banned for NBC Olympics criticism

The two-day saga of the journalist suspended from Twitter because he posted the corporate email address of an NBC executive is over. [Twitter reinstated Guy Adams’ account today](https://twitter.com/guyadams/status/230359474655870978).

[On the company’s official blog](http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety-and.html), Twitter general counsel [Alex Macgillivray](http://twitter.com/amac) wrote that the company does not generally monitor the content that flows over the network to check for abuse. Instead, it relies on abuse reports posted by users to flag content for review.

But that’s not how it worked this time.

Because [Twitter has partnered with NBC](http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10000872396390444025204577543313839816248-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwMjAyODI3Wj.html) to highlight tweets about the Olympics, there is apparently a “team working closely with NBC” as part of the partnership, and that team did “proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules” and encouraged NBC to file an abuse complaint.

Adams’ Twitter suspenstion caused an uproar online, bringing criticism from all corners of the Internet about the microblogging site’s mishandling of a free speech issue.

Some examples of the criticism:

* [Mashable](http://mashable.com/2012/07/30/twitter-journalist-suspended/)
* [Dan Gillmore](http://dangillmor.com/2012/07/30/is-twitters-suspension-of-journalists-account-a-defining-moment/)
* [GigaOm](http://gigaom.com/2012/07/30/twitter-snuffs-an-olympics-critic-smart-play-or-censorship/)
* [New York Times](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/reporter-is-banished-from-twitter-after-post-on-nbcs-olympics-coverage/?smid=tw-share)
* [Storify account of the reaction](http://storify.com/YahooSports/reaction-to-guy-adams-twitter-suspension)

Here is the tweet that caused the trouble:

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