OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Twitter boss Elon Musk has once again fact-checked the liberal media following a wave of personal attacks after several journalists used his platform to reveal heavy censorship and banning of users amid the 2020 election cycle and the coronavirus pandemic.
In particular, Musk was responding to what Newsbusters characterized as a typical “hit piece” from the Washington Post, which quoted anonymous sources who took potshots at Musk and suggested that his actions on Twitter in exposing past misbehavior by the previous management team and federal agencies such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.
The story, under the headline, “Twitter brings Elon Musk’s genius reputation crashing down to earth,” the Post reported:
Musk has built his reputation on having a Midas touch with the companies he runs — something many investors and experts thought he would bring to Twitter when he purchased it for $44 billion in October, paying nearly twice as much as it was worth by some analyst estimates. He is known for sleeping on the factory floor at Tesla, demanding long hours and quick turnarounds from his workers. He is seen as an engineering genius, propelling promises of cars that can drive themselves and rockets that can take humans to Mars.
But that image is unraveling. Some Twitter employees who worked with Musk are doubtful his management style will allow him to turn the company around. And some investors in Tesla, by far the biggest source of his wealth, have begun to see him as a liability. Musk’s distraction has prompted questions about leadership of SpaceX as well, though it is much less reliant on his active involvement. Meanwhile, Neuralink and Boring Co., two companies he founded, continue to lag on promises.
Later in the story, the reporter began quoting from anonymous sources who were critical of Musk.
“Musk is repeatedly described as a man obsessed with Twitter in all the wrong ways, who is failing both at protecting his new investment and his previous ones, according to interviews with a half-dozen former Twitter employees and people in Musk’s orbit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution or because they were not authorized to speak publicly about company matters,” he wrote.
Still later, the reporter finally got to the recent “Twitter Files” dumps, which reveal how much collusion occurred between federal agencies like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security and the former Twitter management team, which worked with both the Trump and Biden administrations to censor content and ban users.
“Instead of focusing on plans to make the site a competitor to YouTube with video and rolling out other new features that will earn revenue, he instead got sucked into the culture wars, the people said,” the Post report claimed. “That took the form of the Twitter Files, an examination by some journalists of many of the company’s actions before Musk’s arrival, such as the blocking of a New York Post story that dug into the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the ban on former president Donald Trump.”
The report, however, failed to note that the Washington Post itself admitted that the information on the laptop was genuine, though not until late March of this year. The paper acquired the contents of the laptop in June 2021, but waited nine months to publish anything about it.
After the Post’s attack, as well as attacks from other left-leaning media, Musk took to his platform to advise in a post containing a video clip of an Axios reporter being interviewed by CNBC: “The legacy media should worry about its reputation. We have only just begun.”
The legacy media should worry about its reputation. We have only just begun.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2022
Following the Twitter Files releases, a substantial majority of Americans want the FBI investigated for its alleged role in having content throttled and censored on Twitter following allegations of interference on the platform this month.
According to a newly released survey by Rasmussen Reports, 63 percent of respondents said they want the new Congress to launch probes of FBI-induced censorship on Twitter and social media giant Facebook, while the same amount of respondents said they believe that it took place.
