Twitter Won't Suspend NY Post And Daily News For Posting Grisly James Foley Covers

When the news of James Foley's beheading by jihadist group ISIS started to make headlines yesterday, there seemed to be a common plea: Don't tweet graphic images from the video showing the American photojournalist's gruesome death.

Instead, friends, colleagues, and strangers tweeted news links with photos of 40-year-old Foley, who had been missing in Syria since November 2012, during happier times. There was also a widespread #IsisMediaBlackout, that spread like wildfire Tuesday afternoon, in an attempt to not give ISIS the coverage they so badly wanted from the media.

Please tweet this photo of James Foley and not any of him in the hands of his gutless murderers. #RIPJamesFoley pic.twitter.com/cAcVVJgyDn

- Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) August 19, 2014

Then Twitter took it a step further, when CEO Dick Costolo announced Wednesday morning that any account sharing these brutal and disturbing images on Twitter would have their feeds frozen.

But this rule seems to bend when it comes to New York City's dueling tabloids, The New York Daily News and The New York Post, both of which bore the headline "SAVAGES" over glaringly inappropriate images taken straight from ISIS's video of Foley's beheading. Both papers' social media accounts tweeted the images of their front pages this morning.

Business Insider has blurred out the images.

This was the New York Post:

And this was The Daily News:

Twitter roared in outrage; calling for both tabloids to take down the images, saying that their graphic covers littering New York newstands was surely enough. Both social accounts remain intact.

@nypost this cover is by far your worst, most insensitive and tasteless. Whomever is responsible for this is out of touch and irresponsible

- andrew paskoff (@apaskoff) August 20, 2014

Business Insider reached out to Twitter, where a spokesperson told us the Post and Daily News accounts would not be suspended.

"The Post's tweet contains this warning for some users, depending on their media settings," an email from Twitter read, referring to a text block warning that shows up in place of the photo, allowing users the option to click through to the image or to skip over it. But both the editor and author of this story were not warned of the graphic nature of the image before it appeared on both of our Twitter timelines this morning; such is the case for many others.

When asked why some accounts tweeting similar images of James Foley were suspended but not others, considering Costolo's apparent hardline stance on the subject, Twitter did not respond.