Once again, social media has reminded the editors and managers of traditional media that when it comes to live events or disseminating news worldwide in real time, they cannot compete. While traditional media was squabbling over whether the live interaction on X between tech billionaire Elon Musk and Grand Old Party (GOP) nominee Donald Trump was a conversation, a conversational interview or an interview, the chat between the world’s two most unavoidable men crossed 200 million views, as per Musk’s claim in a post. The morning after, Musk tweeted again, saying the conversation had garnered one billion combined views – a jaw-dropping number for legacy media.

I was keeping a close eye on the event’s coverage by traditional media. It was disappointing to see that much of it was mostly negative; the slew of headlines both in the UK and the US painted the two-hour interaction in a dark light. One headline screamed: “Trump’s interview with Musk devolves into yet another X catastrophe”. Legacy print media published a number of articles on the event. USA Today said it was an “unmitigated disaster”, The New York Times called it a “two-hour ramble”, and the Washington Post called it “softballs”. Other traditional media outlets were no different: CNN compared the event to watching “Grumpy Old Men”, and MSNBC called it a “failed” interview. Some focused more on the delay caused by a technical glitch. A Guardian analysis was headlined: “Elon Musk’s X suffers tech failure at start of Donald Trump interview”, while BBC said, “Musk’s X talk with Trump hit by tech glitches”. 

UK Riots And Social Media 

In the hours after three young girls were brutally stabbed to death in the UK’s Southport town on July 29, news and reactions began to flow on social platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. There were real-time updates on the horrific incident on these platforms. On the other hand, many felt that the mainstream media offered a lukewarm coverage of the incident until all hell broke loose and widespread violent protests swept across towns and cities in England. The news of the three girls being killed was initially treated by the legacy media as a routine crime story after it emerged that there was no terror link. It was only after fake videos and unverified news began circulating widely and getting millions of views that established media woke up from its slumber.   

The vacuum was filled by some notorious far-right people on social media who were accused of posting inflammatory material. 

The British government named Elon Musk as one of those who were “stirring the pot”. Reacting to the riots, Musk suggested in a post that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK. Responding to Prime Minister Keith Starmer’s comments on the attacks on the Muslim community he asked, “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on all communities?”. He also accused the police of being biased against protesters 

Billionaire Knows What He’s Doing

Elon Musk appears to have learnt something from the fall of traditional media, which has been accused of lacking in innovation and stagnating; it desperately depends on social media platforms to amplify its content.

Musk has 194.4 million followers on X. He is the most followed man on the platform. The CEO of X, Linda Yaccarini, says the platform has 500 million active users a month. Surely, Musk is aware of this reach, and he is using it strategically to his advantage with a view to weaken the legacy media. One can see his strategy at play by the way he was able to pull off a two-hour interview with Trump and in the run-up to it how he drummed it up.

That was not an isolated incident. Musk came to Donald Trump’s defence in March too when the latter said at a rally in Ohio that there would be a “blood bath” in the US if he lost the November election. He fired a series of posts on X in response to the coverage and urged the people to use his platform to share news instead of reading or watching it on traditional outlets. He accused the legacy media of lying about Trump’s comment, saying his comment was taken out of context.

Open Challenge 

Elon Musk, described variously as a genius and innovator, besides being one of the richest men in the world, appears to have openly challenged the traditional media’s established 200-year hegemony over news and current affairs. In one of his posts, he said, “Citizen journalism from actual domain experts and people actually on the ground is much faster, more accurate and has less bias than the legacy media”. The claim of being “more accurate” and “less biased” can be contested, but not social media being “much faster” than the legacy media.

Social platforms, such as  TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, are officially still tech companies, but they have daily news capsules, real-time coverage of events and timeline postings, which cannot be matched by mainstream media. These have emerged as a big challenge to the established, legacy media.

Needless to say, many political parties and popular leaders of the world have robust social media strategies. They too have grasped the importance of speed and reach and often bypass the legacy media to reach out to their followers and voters of their countries, because they believe they interact more closely with their supporters through these platforms.

Will Legislation Help?

Europe has already passed a law to hold social media accountable. Now it’s the British government’s turn. Its Online Safety Bill aims to regulate social media platforms and protect users from harmful content. The Bill asks companies to remove fake and illegal content and establishes Ofcom (media regulators) as the regulator with the power to fine companies up to £18 million or 10% of annual global turnover for non-compliance. The legislation is expected to come into force by 2025. Some anti-far-right organisations have urged the government to implement it as early as possible.  

But will that in some way curb the growing popularity of social media? Will it slow them down in terms of the speed with which they churn out news? Will the erosion of trust and threat to democracy argument hold good? 

What Should The Legacy Media Do?

I can say with the authority of my 30 years of experience in mainstream Western media that they are still slow to innovate, as they were slow to embrace digital transformation and shy of collaborating with social media. 

“Digital transformation” is the buzzword in the BBC today. They are being bold in their leap to digitisation at the cost of traditional media, such as TV and radio. Also, it may sound bizarre, but BBC News is quite new to TikTok. It dawned on them only last year that they had lost out on the young audiences of TikTok who, they learnt, consumed news in bulk.

But it’s a strategy full of risks. A balance between legacy and social media, along with innovation and speed, could be the key to surviving and staying stable.  

(Syed Zubair Ahmed is a London-based senior Indian journalist with three decades of experience with the Western media)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

“Why harp on the facts, it’s the exaggerations that makes a tale interesting!” A favourite aunt once exclaimed when I tried to fact-check a funny family story she was narrating to a huge, giggling audience two decades ago. Each member of my clan cheered her on and it was the start of a delightful evening.

Donald Trump’s interview with Elon Musk sent me back in time as I waded through the conversation. Both Trump and Musk know the importance of exaggerations in any narrative. The Indic epic poets knew it. Herodotus knew it. And so did Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. Trump’s exaggerations, ably supported by his interviewer, made for a good story for his supporters. All 60 million of them he thought were tuned into the live broadcast. This number is an exaggeration, too.

A Risk Worth Taking

But why does Trump exaggerate all the time despite a bevvy of fact-checkers waiting to give each syllable uttered by him a hang-draw-quarter treatment? Political storytelling is assessed under different rubrics than literary texts. Is this a risk worth taking? The answer is a resounding yes. 

Trump capitalises on narcissism when he indulges in making outlandish claims. To understand this link better, let’s look at what the experts have to say about narcissism. “For the narcissistically involved person, there is only one reality: that of his own thought processes, feelings and needs. The world outside is not experienced or perceived objectively, i.e., as existing in its own terms, conditions and needs,” Erich Fromm proposed in the 1950s.  Fromm also posited that narcissists have a stronger sense of entitlement. This lays bare the reasons behind Trump’s constant resort to exaggerations.

Narcissism And Politics

All politicians are narcissistic in some measure; this trait allows them to, first, enter politics, and then stay in it. Narcissism, however, has a highly specialised function for certain political ideologies. The interlinkages of narcissism with the sense of entitlement are important to understand while analysing why Trump’s narcissism works for him politically. A study conducted by political scientists Peter K. Hatemi and Zoltân Fazekas found that “In the 2016 election, higher entitlement reflected the mood of the general public, certainly among the working class, which voted Republican in greater numbers”. Hatemi and Fazekas propose that narcissism may have a role to play in the rise of populist politics. Trump’s constituents and those curious about him are offered a blanket of familiarity.

In simple terms, Trump’s worldview, presented with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and confidence, wins people over. People who are ever so anxious about their entitlements being eroded. And this is why statements like the following work: “Our crime rate’s going through the roof.” Who cares whether the FBI’s reports show a consistent decline in crime levels since 2020, his last presidential year? Add to it a provocative claim about Kamala Harris, “She wants to release all the prisoners that are in detention, and some of these guys are really bad. That just came out today” and you have successfully created a sense of impending doom.

Trump, The Rescuer

Trump is relying on honest Americans to believe that their entitlements are being eaten away by outsiders. Thus, he makes exaggerated claims like, “You have millions of people coming in a month” and “I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country” about illegal immigrants. He wants people to believe that they are living under extraordinary circumstances by saying, “I think we have the worst inflation we’ve had in 100 years. They say it’s 48 years, I don’t believe it”. Shrinking entitlements being further nibbled on by outsiders-which one of us, narcissist or not, would find that desirable?

People need to despair for the narcissist to, then, brandishing his exaggerated belief in self, come in for the rescue. Trump wants people to believe that he, and only he, can solve these crises. Just the way only he could “solve” the Iran and China crises for the United States. “Iran was broke because I told China, ‘If you buy from Iran…’ Oil, it’s all about the oil, that’s where the money is. ‘…If you buy oil from Iran, you’re not going to do any business with the United States.’ And I meant it, and they said, ‘We’ll pass,’ and they didn’t buy oil.” America can be made great again only when it is unequivocally established that it is in ruins. And it can be made great again only by Trump.

Trump’s conversation with Musk, therefore, needs to be seen not as a “rambling” one which has significantly undermined his presidential prospects but as a tested strategy aimed at his constituents and swing voters. Whether it will fetch him a repeat of the 2016 outcome remains to be seen. 
Till then, let’s get lost in the meandering world of storytelling. 

(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author