Tim Graham
Tim Graham is Executive Editor of NewsBusters and host of the NewsBusters Podcast. His career at the MRC began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the internet era.
Liberal reporters really hate how Twitter isn’t a reinforcement and censorship tool for them any more. The Washington Post published a “Crappy Anniversary” piece headlined “A year later, Musk’s X is tilting right. And sinking.”
A team of four reporters – Will Oremus, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Sarah Ellison, and Jeremy B Merrill – report Twitter is sinking, based on “interviews” and leaks:
The number of people actively tweeting has dropped by more than 30 per cent, according to previously unreported data obtained by The Washington Post, and the company – which the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX has renamed X – is hemorrhaging advertisers and revenue, interviews show.
There are a bunch of people fired by Musk commenting in this story. But here’s the part they really hate… displacing the so-called “mainstream media.”
Musk has furthered the company’s rightward turn by displacing the mainstream media from a position of authority on the site: Both X’s software and iconic “blue check” verification system now elevate the tweets of paying subscribers – many of them conservative influencers. People who have worked with Musk and his CEO, Linda Yaccarino, say they intend to turn X into a self-contained forum for creator content where people can watch original shows like Carlson’s.
Amid these shifts, the platform has become a cacophony of misinformation and confusing reports, according to new research from the University of Washington, which found that self-described news aggregators and open-source researchers far outperformed traditional media on the site during the Israel-Gaza war.
And who does the Post bring in to say Twitter is no longer trustworthy? An Obama Bro! Oh sure, trust him when he claims it wasn’t a happy place for Democrats and the Left!
“Twitter used to be where politics and news conversations were being shaped on a minute-by-minute basis. I don’t think it’s because I’m a Democrat or on the left – it’s just no longer a place to get accurate information,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director under President Barack Obama.
Now you can complain that Musk’s Twitter made the “blue-check” verification mark [that] is now something you can simply pay for… but as DeSantis aide Christina Pushaw mocked on Twitter:
There again the liberals who “nonpartisan” NewsGuard as the gold standard – when we noticed the fake news on the “Israeli airstrike” didn’t dent any “100 percent” ratings for liberal outlets.
Other than that amazing passage, this may be the biggest line of unintentional humor: Musk didn’t use to be so “partisan”… when he supported Obama!
Musk wasn’t always so partisan. He says he supported Obama, and his business interests in Tesla and SolarCity aligned with liberal support for clean energy subsidies. But he became disenchanted with the left over its criticism of billionaires, support for labor unions, and race and gender politics.
The quartet’s dirge ends with both Pfeiffer and Christopher Rufo worrying about Twitter looking too conservative:
But even Rufo worries Musk could go too far in his open embrace of the right wing. “If it starts to create the perception that the platform is unbalanced,” he said, “that could diminish its value in the long term.”
Pfeiffer, the former Obama adviser, agreed. “Even if your goal was to change the ideological conversation, you’re less effective because there are fewer people on the platform,” he said. “So congrats, Elon, on cutting your nose to spite your face.”