Journalism as Activism

A new low for print publications

Did you hear? Elon Musk has used illegal drugs. No, it’s true. It was reported by the Wall Street Journal:

The world’s wealthiest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter, according to people who have witnessed his drug use and others with knowledge of it. Musk has previously smoked marijuana in public and has said he has a prescription for the psychedelic-like ketamine. 

In today’s world where there’s a euphemism for everything, here it is spelled out l plain as day. You would never read about a “homeless drug addicted schizophrenic prostitute” from these publications. You would read about a “unhoused content creator with substance abuse and mental health issues”. But here we are in 2024, reading about Elon Musk using illegal drugs at parties, seemingly by himself with no one else of note partaking.

Or maybe WSJ is going to start a recurring expose of famous people and their illegal drug use from these parties. It could be like the Epstein client list but a lot more boring. You remember WSJ exhaustive front page coverage of the Epstein client list? Right? Right??

Why is Musk’s drug use news worthy?

Illegal drug use would likely be a violation of federal policies that could jeopardize SpaceX’s billions of dollars in government contracts. Musk is intrinsic to the value of his companies, potentially putting at risk around $1 trillion in assets held by investors, tens of thousands of jobs and big parts of the U.S. space program.

It’s so great that WSJ journalists are doing the necessary due-diligence for federal agencies. Or maybe the journalists are moonlighting as shareholder activists demanding answers for TSLAs (↑969.73% 5y) performance.

But honestly, they should really drug test these people. Oh wait…

An attorney for Musk, Alex Spiro, said that Musk is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.”

But “people familiar with Musk” and unnamed board members say there is a lot of concern around his drug use. Here’s one board member publicly privately confronted spoke to Elon Kimbal about Elons drug use behavior

Some directors, including current Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm, have gone to Kimbal Musk, who is a Tesla board member and was a SpaceX board member until early 2022, for help with Musk’s behavior, without using the word “drugs,” the people said.

The smoking gun we've been waiting for.

Rocket man bad

WSJ doesn’t care about illegal drug use. For instance, in the few stories about Hunter Biden, drug use isn’t mentioned until at least half way down the article:

Senior White House staff and Biden allies are uncomfortable that Hunter Biden keeps putting himself in the spotlight and wish he would maintain a lower profile, according to people familiar with the situation. They see little upside in reminding voters of his antics, which involve failure to pay taxes on time and inappropriate behavior as he struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol.

I need to remember add antics to my list of euphemisms.

And I’m mostly fine with this. Hunter Biden is a private citizen afterall (as is Musk). But there’s certainly more justification on reporting on his drug use substance abuse than that of Musk.

So why the interest in Musk? You would think the CEO of the largest electric vehicle manufacturer and the person largely responsible for getting America back in the space race would bebpopular with corporate media. But alas, there are some sins that are unpardonable which he clearly committed.

I'm not opposed to this kind of reporting per se. If it showed up on Daily Mail or NY Post I would get a kick out of it. Buts it's beneath the Wall Street Journal.

Journalists as activists

A corporation is made up of people. And those people ultimately make the decisions. The problem is that journalists are an increasingly homogenous cohort. They all went to the same schools, studied the same things, had no other careers besides journalist and hence think the same. And worse of all, they see journalism as a means of activism. Both of the authors went to school to study journalism and have worked as journlists their entire careers. Here is how one of the authors, Kristen Grind, explains it on LinkedIn:

I cover a wide range of issues affecting tech companies and the billionaires that run them, including harassment allegations and other worker issues, privacy concerns, data-sharing etc

Do you think she’s interested in reporting the news or changing the world?

The “tech journalist” who hates tech is a strange phenomenon. Its like an overweight health minister.

Weaponized doxxing

A few months back, Forbes doxxed a somewhat popular Twitter handle Beff Jezos. At the time he was mostly a shit poster with 50k followers, so you know there was a public interest to know. But don’t worry, it wasn’t doxxing as Forbes explain:

(Revealing the name behind an anonymous account of public note is not “doxxing,” which is an often-gendered form of online harassment that reveals private information — like an address or phone number — about a person without consent and with malicious intent.)

People aren’t dumb and media is ever more brazen about what they think they can get away with. So obviously trust in media continues to plummet. I just hope these organizations eventually pull back and have a hard look into what's causing the distrust.