A certain revelry has captivated the Fourth Estate in recent days: the potential collapse of Twitter under the stewardship of Elon Musk. And while Musk has publicly delighted in snarky retorts, citing record engagement on the social media platform, he is not the first big name to suffer under the digital witchcraft of the legacy media. Self-appointed gatekeepers of the "trademarked truth" have long struck out at enemies who dare infringe upon what they consider their journalistic turf. The late Andrew Breitbart being a case in point.
Musk and the New Media
Musk's goal is as seemingly simple as it is open; he tweeted, "Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That's our mission." The new "Chief Twit" also issued a warning that the traditional press may finally have to compete in an open market. "Mainstream media will still thrive, but increased competition from citizens will cause them to be more accurate, as their oligopoly on information is disrupted," he wrote.
Conservative icon Andrew Breitbart held to a similar philosophy. In April 2015, Breitbart lambasted the gatekeepers as purveyors of fake news who twisted narratives for a political cause, urging all in the Washington, DC, audience to assume the journalistic mantle:
"Everybody put your cellphones up in the air… We have a sea of new media here to capture the lies… The new media is taking over where the old media failed. Yes, they failed, my friends. Yes, they failed."
It is the "new media," the regular folks who can report on what they see and what they experience, without spin, narrative control, or a veil of editorial expectation, that has the old media concerned with its place in the world. "Twitter is All the News… By the People, For the People," Musk declared. And that unassuming clarion call was apparently enough for the American press to man the battlements in defending its long-held territory.
"The End Is Nigh … Maybe"
Media outlets flooded Friday's front pages with hints at the imminent demise of the social media giant. A smattering of headlines reads:
"Is this really the end of Twitter?" – BBC
"Twitter Is Dying, and I Don't Feel So Good Myself" – Vanity Fare
"Misinformation threatens Twitter's function as a public safety tool" – NPR
"What Will Writers Do Without Twitter?" – The Atlantic
This last article via The Atlantic beings with an ominous diatribe of blunt statements:
"Twitter might be at death's door. Elon Musk seems to be running it into the ground at comical speed. New reporting every day tracks mass layoffs within the company, discontinued micro-features, glitching systems. Predictions range from a partial to a full collapse. If Twitter survives, the consensus seems to be, it may not be recognizable…"
One could be forgiven for assuming that the authors of such posts hope to become the progenitors of Twitter's downfall. After all, reporters no longer report the news but rather agree upon an acceptable narrative pursuant to their ideological goals. Unethical, you say? But for some, the ends always justify the means. In this case, the "ends" are safeguarding positions of power as the dominant doormen and women of communication.
Mr. Breitbart put forward a compelling case for why such behavior is a feature rather than a bug of modern journalism. He said, "Wherever you go, whether it be a college campus or the New York Times or ABC News or Venezuela or Cuba or the former Soviet Union, it's amazing how the speech codes and the trying to shut up dissent is a defining aspect of the left because they believe so firmly in their utopian ideals that anyone who would disagree with that utopia is an enemy of the state, and they treat them as such."
No Gatekeepers in the Public Square
Elon Musk (Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/GC Images)
As MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski once let slip, "he [President Trump] could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think; and that's our job." It seems that commanding the narrative and the "messaging" is a powerful weapon that brings with it a lack of accountability. Musk appears to want information to be consumed and created outside of postage stamp consensus, or an "open-sourcing" of the news, as he puts it. And while this will inevitably lead to instances of fake news, or misinformation, it is not as though the mainstream media has a sterling record in such regards – the Hunter Biden laptop cover-up and Trump-Russia collusion, to name just a couple of episodes.
The attacks on Mr. Musk, and more specifically, the wish fulfillment prophecies of the Fourth Estate that Twitter collapse, will not end until either the blue bird is back under the thumb or news media undergoes true democratization.
With the once-banned accounts of Dr. Jordan Peterson and the Babylon Bee now being welcomed back to the Twitter fold - garnering in equal measure both applause and condemnation – it seems clear that the new CEO is determined to dance to his own tune. Despite the legacy media's fevered dream of controlling digital space, it would be a foolish bet to count Musk out. He owns the company for a reason and can afford the upkeep – including any tumultuous teething issues - because of the business choices he has made in the past; those that ignore his record do so at the risk of severe disappointment.
But as Elon Musk wades into perhaps uncharted waters, he could benefit from a word of advice courtesy of Andrew Breitbart, who sailed similar seas: "the most potent weapon out there is to go fight the fire, go towards the fire."
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