Elon Musk took a swing at corporate media by accusing it of siding with the government after his controversial “Twitter Files” reports were met with an underwhelming response.
The “Twitter Files”, or internal records of the company under previous leadership, were given by Mr Musk to handpicked journalists.
The journalists have posted excerpts of the documents as Twitter threads and claimed right-wing voices were earlier suppressed on the social media platform.
“Why is corporate journalism rushing to defend the state instead of the people?” asked the free-speech absolutist and billionaire, quote tweeting journalist and documentary filmmaker Leighton Woodhouse who said corporate media was defending the FBI and the state instead of exposing it.
In the same thread, Mr Musk, who owns a number of large corporate entities, responded to a user saying he wouldn’t mind buying subscription newsletter platform Substack as well.
Substack allows independent writers and podcasters publish directly to their audience and get paid through subscriptions.
Taking a dig at major news platforms like NBC, BBC, DW and others, Mr Musk also posted a meme that appeared to show a majority of American news media has ignored the Twitter Files .
The tech mogul has been under fire from several quarters for controversial moves like reinstating Donald Trump and Kanye West’s accounts.
Mr Musk’s Twitter Files revealed some of the internal decision-making processes that affected mostly right-wing Twitter accounts that the company decided broke its rules against hateful conduct, as well as those that violated the platform’s rules against spreading harmful misinformation about Covid-19.
The first Twitter Files thread was written by Substack journalist Matt Taibbi and focussed on Twitter’s internal discussion over the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election, won by his father Joe Biden.
Major media outlets, however, have treated the documents with skepticism, with most news organisations ignoring various entries in the ongoing series. Several also believe the information revealed was already known about social-media governance.
“The Twitter Files tell us nothing new. There’s no shocking revelation in there about government censorship or covert manipulation by political campaigns. They merely bring to the surface the internal deliberations of a company dealing with complex issues in ways consistent with its values,” said Gerard Baker, the conservative former top editor of The Wall Street Journal.
Right-wing outlets, however, have used the Twitter threads to further long-running conservative and Republican claims that social media platforms censor their views.
In recent days, Mr Musk was widely criticised for banning the accounts of reporters from CNN, Mashable, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
