HERESY: Tesla Founder Elon Musk Accused Of Being Mean To Media
Last week, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who believes he has been mistreated by the media, lashed out at their bias against his companies, noting particularly that the media’s bias had been responsible for the election of President Trump:
The holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them twitter.com/electrekco/sta…
Musk continues his slow transformation into a media-baiting Trump figure screaming irrationally about fake news. Hope it works out for you dude! twitter.com/elonmusk/statu…
Thought you’d say that. Anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks “You’re just like Trump!” Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no ones believes you any more. You lost your credibility a long time ago.
Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication. Thinking of calling it Pravda …
Even if some of the public doesn’t care about the credibility score, the journalists, editors & publications will. It is how they define themselves.
Come on media, you can do it! Get more people to vote for you. You are literally the media.
Amazingly, the “media is awesome” vote is declining, despite hundreds of articles attacking this very poll
All of this is relatively uncontroversial stuff – there’s no question that while some of Musk’s bad press is earned (see, e.g., his government subsidies), the press’ coverage of Tesla’s auto-drive function is nuts. And the notion of starting a site directed against bias in the media is a good one, and a useful one.
But Musk’s gall in calling out members of the media and suggesting a media watchdog – something the media celebrated when that watchdog was directed at Fox News and called Media Matters – has obviously raised hackles. Take, for example, this piece from Erin Biba at The Daily Beast. Biba attacked Musk by stating, “A billionaire w/massive power @elonmusk lashed out at two of the most under-attack industries in the country: Journalism and Science. Both are essential for democracy. We should criticize our important institutions, but we shouldn’t threaten their existence w/powerful ignorance…Elon Musk is an irresponsible person who doesn’t seem to realize (or care) about the damage he is doing. Our love affair with billionaires needs to end.” Musk tweeted back, “I have never attacked science. Definitely attacked misleading journalism like yours though.”
Then people sent mean tweets to Biba.
OMG, as the kids say.
She writes:
Musk’s tweet turned into a singularity of hate against currently targeted institutions in our country. The MuskBros had a lot of opinions about me being a woman criticizing their hero. And the MAGA set were thrilled that someone with such a big following was on their side against science and journalism.
Well, then. So Musk tweets out something relatively polite, his followers go nuts, and it’s his fault. How convenient. But that’s the way journalisming works these days: provoke another public figure into saying something contrary, then seize on the backlash by that figure’s followers as evidence of ill intent by that public figure.
If this is journalism, no wonder Musk is receiving support for bashing it.
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