Khaberni - Reporters Without Borders concluded after analyzing the account of American billionaire Elon Musk on his owned platform X, that he published more than a thousand contents hostile to the media during the 365 days.
The organization published its report on the occasion of the upcoming third anniversary of Musk's acquisition of Twitter and its renaming to X on October 28, 2022, stating that the businessman attacked the media approximately three times a day from September 2024 to last month.
Musk, who has 227 million followers, wrote 1017 posts attacking the press, with his attacks ranging from insults to delegitimizing professional news media, such as "New York Times is pure propaganda" and “traditional media lies”.
Repeatedly, Musk—who served as the Director of Government Efficiency Administration under President Donald Trump—accused the media of being conduits for misinformation, or of practicing propaganda for the Democratic Party, and in more than a third of the posts, he saw that media institutions mislead the public, presenting his social network X as an "antidote".
Vincent Bertié, the head of the Technology and Press Office at "Reporters Without Borders," said that Elon Musk, in the name of freedom of expression, launches a relentless attack on the media, which fuels hatred and distrust.
Americans' trust in the media continues to decline, with only 28% expressing confidence in newspapers, television, and radio to deliver the news fully, accurately, and fairly, representing a new decline from last year (31%) and five years ago (40%), the first time the rate has dropped below 30% according to the Gallup Research and Surveys Foundation.
Events Witnessed Intensive Attacks
According to Reporters Without Borders analysis, the rate of publications peaked in the period leading up to the U.S. presidential elections in November 2024, where in one week Musk—who was then one of Trump's staunchest supporters—posted or reposted 58 attacks on the media, writing that they are involved with extreme left-wing propaganda and interference in elections.
Musk's content hostile to the press was not limited to American news, as he accused earlier this year the media of covering up "gang rapes committed by migrant gangs," as part of an online campaign against the government of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. According to him, "a quarter of a million little girls" were and still are victims of these rapes, a figure not based on any real foundation and which the media cannot verify.
Musk—who was born in South Africa during the apartheid era—also blamed the media there for not covering what he described as "white genocide," referring to the farmers who were killed in South Africa, a claim also repeated by Trump.
The organization commented that Musk’s allegations are factually incorrect, as neither the statistics on this topic reported by the media nor the judgments issued by courts in South Africa confirm the existence of such a phenomenon.
X as the Sole Alternative to the Media
The organization confirmed that the billionaire's—classified in 2021 as the world's richest man—efforts to tarnish the reputation of the professional media were accompanied by highlighting accounts he describes as "citizen journalism," some of which were reported by the Oversight Authority—concerned with rating news sites—as entities that spread misinformation, and Reporters Without Borders found that more than half of Musk’s posts are derived from these accounts.
Musk regularly celebrates X topping the app store rankings, advancing over news media apps.
Elon Musk's ideological campaign goes hand in hand with his commercial project of building a news platform that relies on distributing content produced by influential accounts on X platform, according to the organization.
Elon Musk has frequently repeated his favorite slogan since 2024, "You are the media now," as he looks to turn every user into a content producer and present their work as equivalent to that of veteran journalists.
