Controversial blogger Chuck Johnson has once again found himself at the center of a storm.
Johnson’s Twitter account has been suspended after he published a post early Sunday soliciting funds for the purpose of “taking out” civil rights activist DeRay McKesson, CNN’s Carol Costello reports.
The tweet on Johnson’s since-suspended account read, “Go to gotnews.com/donate if you want to give money to taking out @deray.”
McKesson (pictured above) responded to Johnson’s tweet, writing, “Yes, I take this as a serious threat.”
In a response to the suspension, Johnson wrote an email to website Re/code stating that he was “speaking metaphorically about exposing DeRay in much the same way Slate was speaking metaphorically about ‘taking out’ a Supreme Court justice.”
And in a post on Got News, Johnson, who describes himself as “an award-winning journalist who has exposed frauds, ended careers, and been profiled in major publications,” contended that he merely “tweeted that I was interested in doing some research” on McKesson, who he called “a leader of the anti-cop astroturfing currently hitting the inner city black community.
“Of course I knew this would happen,” Johnson added. “Twitter has a serious problem with investigative journalism that breaks the mold.”
In an interview with Costello, McKesson didn’t buy Johnson’s explanation.
“For someone who considers himself a journalist, I firmly believe that he understands the power of his words,” McKesson said. “If I got on any media outlet and said something to the effect of ‘take out the police,’ nobody would think that I was talking about an exposé. It would function to mean a physical threat.
“This isn’t free speech,” McKesson told CNN. “That wasn’t free speech, that was hate speech.”
Johnson is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he caught heat for publishing what he thought to be the real name of what he thought to be the real name of “Jackie,” the woman who claimed to Rolling Stone that she was raped on the University of Virginia campus, in a story that has since been retracted by the magazine’s publisher. He also came under fire for publishing the addresses of two Ferguson, Missouri-based New York Times reporters.
Watch McKesson speak to CNN in the video.
Twitter has suspended a blogger for threatening the life of civil rights activist @DeRay. Here’s how it unfolded: http://t.co/64mQp8g8yg
— Carol Costello (@CarolCNN) May 25, 2015