Elon Musk Has Plans to Shake Up the Media

He slams the 'holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted May 25, 2018 8:12 AM CDT
Journos Take Issue With Elon Musk's Plans for 'Pravda'
In this Feb. 6, 2018 photo, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at a news conference in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Tesla is a company of big ideas, but its stock is falling because of much more practical concerns.   (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

Elon Musk turned his attention from rockets, electric cars, and tunneling to lash out at the media this week, slamming the "holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies" and vowing to launch his own website "where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist." The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said he would name the new venture "Pravda" after the old Soviet newspaper. Some thought he was joking, though people also thought Musk was joking when he talked about starting a tunnel-boring firm called The Boring Company, the Wall Street Journal reports. In a series of tweets, Musk mocked the media and polled his followers to see what they thought of the Pravda idea. Some 88% voted in favor.

Musk's idea was not a hit with the media, with some journalists comparing him to President Trump or warning that crowdsourcing credibility ratings online would never work, the Verge reports. Molly Roberts at the Washington Post says Musk's anti-media "meltdown" is unsurprising in light of recent reports on issues with the Tesla Model 3, unionization efforts at Tesla factories, and crashes of self-driving cars. She describes the Pravda plan as the height of Silicon Valley, a "single individual’s belief that he or she is the right person to surmount seemingly intractable challenges." "Musk didn't seem to mind the media when it was churning out fawning profiles of him," she notes. (More Elon Musk stories.)

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