The Guardian is a “dying publication”, “irrelevant” and a “laboriously vile propaganda machine”, according to Elon Musk.
What did it do to earn this attention from the wealthiest person on the planet? It announced that it will no longer post from any of its official editorial accounts on X, Musk’s social media site.
Its logic is straightforward and compelling. The benefits of being on X are now “outweighed by the negatives” and its resources can be better used promoting its journalism elsewhere.
Its reporters may carry on using the site for newsgathering purposes, X users will still be able to share its articles and the title will still occasionally embed X posts within its articles. But the time-sapping business of maintaining approximately 80 official accounts with more than 27 million followers simply isn’t worth it anymore.
The newspaper, led by editor-in-chief Katharine Viner, said this was something it had been considering for a while. It cited the “often disturbing content” promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.
“The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”
That, of course, used to be newspapers’ job – or at least their proprietors’ – and X chief executive Linda Yaccarino was quick to chip in with the boss-pleasing verdict that “legacy gatekeepers are yesterday’s ‘news’”.
Yaccarino is likely to be busy in the months ahead using Musk’s current alliance with president-elect Donald Trump as leverage to woo back some big brands. Most of them left the platform since he acquired it, destroyed its brand safety credentials and then told those advertisers that paused investment that they could “go f**k themselves”.
Media organisations left, too. Among those beating the Guardian to the punch were US public broadcasting organisations NPR and PBS, which both quit the platform in April 2023, back when it was still called Twitter, after being branded “state-affiliated” or “government-funded” media. The labels were soon discontinued, but the two outlets did not resume posting, with NPR reporting only a negligible impact on its traffic.
The only question now is how many other outlets will finally break free of X and follow the Guardian out the door.
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