Readers may recall that Elon Musk recently advised, “Don’t hate the media, become the media.” Well, his advice to X users to practice citizen journalism was not well received at the National Press Club, a legacy media bastion:

From Jazmin Tolliver at Yahoo News, we learn today,

Axios CEO Jim VandeHei got fired up over Elon Musk’s claims that users on Twitter-turned-X are replacing legacy media.

While delivering a fervent speech at the National Press Club last Thursday, VandeHei slammed the tech billionaire for suggesting that social media users who aren’t professional journalists can provide news coverage without formal training. “Axios CEO Flips Out Over Elon Musk’s ‘Bulls**t’ Claim That X Users Are Replacing The Media,” HuffPost, November 25, 2024

Video here:

Axios CEO: “Everything we do is under fire. Elon Musk sits on Twitter every day saying ‘You are the media.’ My message to Elon Musk is, bulls***! You’re not the media! Having a blue checkmark and 300 words of cleverness doesn’t make you a reporter!” pic.twitter.com/TeMz8JyomT

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) November 25, 2024

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough agreed.

Musk responded, “Yeah, whatever lmao.”

Several factors suggest that Musk is right on the main point

Both in users and public trust, legacy media are declining while user-driven social media continue to grow. Perhaps more significantly, the technology has become quite affordable: “You can do live video easily from your phone.”

Third, it’s not clear that relying on legacy media is a better way to be well-informed any more. Earlier this year, it emerged that NPR head Katherine Maher opined in a 2021 TED talk that “our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”

Many legacy media today are certainly not allowing reverence for truth to distract them. From Abigail Anthony today at National Review:

A new study found that diversity, equity, and inclusion materials have a wide range of negative consequences, including psychological harm, increased hostility, and greater agreement with extreme authoritarian rhetoric, such as adapted Adolf Hitler quotes.

Both the New York Times and Bloomberg were preparing stories on the findings, but axed them just before publication citing editorial decisions.

“DEI Training Material Increases Perception of Nonexistent Prejudice, Agreement with Hitler Rhetoric, Study Finds”

Here’s the open-access study.

So how are these news organizations a better source than X, where this story was widely aired?

Government intervention?

Legacy media are increasingly turning to government to defend them from citizen journalism. In Britain, for example, the government worries that “If current trends continue, the gap between those consuming professional journalism and those who do not will widen at pace.” It is developing plans to do something about that. As Melissa Howe explains at The Mark Steyn Club, “The report goes on some more about ‘imposing criminal sanctions for spreading certain content” and clarifying what the new ‘false communications’ offence means in practice.’”

While the legacy media are doomed no matter what, this conflict is bound to heat up in years to come.