That Elon Musk tries to cast doubt on the reliability of news media says more about himself than about independent journalism.
The social media platform Twitter labels the BBC ‘government-funded’. That followed a few days after the platform removed the ‘verified status’ from The New York Times.
Twitter owner Elon Musk casts doubt on the reliability of independent journalistic media with these actions. It is worrying that he is thus playing into the hands of conspiracy theorists who spread completely unfounded theories about ‘fake news’.
Let it be clear that the independence of the BBC, New York Times, but also Dutch mass media is not under discussion. Although Dagblad van het Noorden is owned by a Belgian publisher, it does not interfere with the journalistic content.
This also applies to broadcasters such as RTV Noord, RTV Drenthe and NOS. Although they are financed by the government, there is no doubt about the objectivity of their journalistic work. The Netherlands has a healthy tradition in this regard: powerful politicians often do not like what the media publish.
An interesting example was played two weeks ago, when the NOS stated after the Council of Ministers about nitrogen that “the pause button had been pressed”, while Rutte and Kaag claimed that there would be “acceleration”. The cabinet members did not agree with what the NOS brought out, they said. They put their own story against it, but the NOS just stuck to its own reading.
Twitter owner Elon Musk’s new labels say more about himself than about the Western ‘mainstream media’. Apparently, Musk has far-reaching power to influence the content of his platform, and he thinks it will be the same with professional news organizations. Apparently social media such as Twitter, but also Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are not really independent and reliable. We already knew that, of course, but it’s good to get it confirmed again.