‘CEO Said a Thing’ Journalism Props Up the Myth of Elon Musk ⇥ karlbode.com

Karl Bode, referencing a dumb Fortune article published last month:

Nothing that headline says is true. It doesn’t seem to matter. “CEO said a thing!” journalism involves, again, no actual journalism. Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Mark Zuckerberg are frequent beneficiaries of the U.S. corporate press’ absolute dedication to propping up extraction class mythologies via clickbait.

Nobody has benefited more from this style of journalism than Elon Musk. His fake supergenius engineer persona was propped up by a lazy press for the better part of two decades before the public even started to realize Musk’s primary skillset was opportunistically using familial wealth and the Paypal money he lucked into to saddle up to actual innovators and take singular credit for their work.

There is a symbiotic relationship these CEOs have with modern and traditional media alike. Musk goes on a three-hour “deeply researched” podcast and says some bullshit about how space will “be by far the cheapest place to put A.I. It will be space in 36 months or less. Maybe 30 months”. And then the host replies “36 months?” and Musk says “less than 36 months”, and then they are off for ten minutes discussing this as though it is a real thing that will really happen. Then real publications cover it like it is serious and real and, when asked for comment, Musk’s companies do not engage.

All these articles and videos bring in the views despite lacking the substance implied by either their publisher or, in the case of these video interviews, their length and serious tone. These CEOs know they can just say stuff. There is no reason to take them at their word, nor to publish a raft of articles based on whatever they say in some friendly and loose interview. Or a tweet, for that matter.