Legacy Media is Panicked about Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover

It’s been exactly one week since Elon Musk took control of Twitter. The wailing and gnashing are still heard across the legacy media landscape.

This is in one sense quite shocking. Why should media members be so outraged about a billionaire buying a social media company from other millionaires and promising to loosen restrictions on the dissemination of speech? In another sense, the outrage can be easily predicted: The legacy media oligopoly may soon be under threat.

Understanding the oligopolistic history legacy media dominance is essential to understand the anger of the Democratic Party and legacy media over Musk’s takeover Twitter.

The three major legacy media sources that Americans relied on were The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the like, up until the 1990s. Many Americans relied on local newspapers. However, these newspapers relied on wire services such as Reuters, AFP, Reuters, and McClatchy.

This oligopoly was able to control both the narrative and market share.

Everything changed with the advent of the internet.

Drudge Report broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal involving former President Bill Clinton. The media landscape changed completely. There had been signs of a growing discontent in the works–talk radio and the rise of Fox News. The internet ended the legacy media dominance. People started diversifying their news feeds in large numbers. People began to read the news outlets that actually read, and they were quick to call out legacy media.

People used to access their favorite websites directly in the early days of the new media. These sites were saved to their bookmarks and they were accessed each morning.

Then, there was major social media. Social media has re-centralized news distribution. Instead of bookmarking 10 websites for example, people now follow 10 accounts on Twitter or add them to their Facebook newsfeeds. This was extremely convenient and was a boon for many non-mainstream news outlets that suddenly had access to billions. It was like a thousand flowers.

There was also some stability: These social media sites, which were controlled by Democrats, were praised for their freedom of speech principles and clever use of the services–as seen in the Obama campaign in 2012.

However, the Democratic Party and legacy media outlets panicked when former President Donald Trump was elected to office in 2016. They believed they had created an unbeatable electoral alliance. Hillary Clinton couldn’t have won legally. Someone had to be held responsible. The obvious answer was: Right-wing misinformation and disinformation, spread via social media, was the culprit.

Now, the legacy media and their Democratic friends began to blame Facebook/Twitter. The social media sites were urged to stop being free platforms for the dissemination of a wide variety of views. Instead, the social media platforms, which had monopolized news traffic, could be used to reestablish the left-wing legacy media oligopoly. The Department of Homeland Security was also under pressure, as The Intercept reported this past week: DHS engaged “in an expansive effort… to influence tech platform platforms.”

“Misinformation” would also be stopped by cutting off traffic to non-legacy media. Legacy media would be promoted, and even elevated. The oligopoly could again take hold, as almost all news traffic to sites comes through these social media sites.

People were expelled for stating the obvious: men are not women; mass masking was not an effective way to stop COVID-19 transmission; vaccine mandates weren’t effective because vaccines didn’t stop transmission; and black Americans were not being targeted by law enforcement based upon race. The Left used social media to restrict information flow by claiming victimhood.

This is why Musk’s purchase Twitter poses such a threat.

Musk will likely allow another thousand flowers to bloom. The oligopoly cannot handle that, so they declared war on Musk.

But it won’t work. Because all he needs to do is say “no”. We only hope that Musk’s example inspires other social media bosses to find the mission that drove them to create their companies and not hide in the corner under the thumb of the Democratic-legacy media media complex.

COPYRIGHT 2022 CREATORS.COM

The Daily Signal offers a variety perspectives. This article is not meant to represent the views of The Heritage Foundation.

Do you have a comment about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected] and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Include the article’s URL or headline, as well as your name and state.

The Daily Signal first published the post Why Legacy Media is Panicked About Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover.