Musk says Twitter under his leadership will put pressure on mainstream media to be more truthful

New Twitter owner Elon Musk said Saturday night the social media platform now under his leadership will put pressure on the mainstream media to be more truthful – commenting about 24 hours after he helped release information suggesting censorship on the platform during the 2020 election was driven by politics and political connections more than facts. 

Musk made the comment in a live Q&A session in which he discussed the release Friday evening of what he named the “Twitter Files” – a joint effort by him and independent journalist Matt Taibbi to expose how the platform handled the Hunter Biden laptop story.

They posted a series of tweets about how Twitter management suppressed on the site a New York Post story in late October 2020 about the contents of a recovered laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of then-Democrat presidential nominee, that had information about the Biden family’s overseas business dealings. 

Musk in the Q&A told the audience that Twitter's goal under his ownership "should be toward truth," which he anticipates will also be a successful business model.

"If the new Twitter is successful in that, then the result would be that people will turn to Twitter to understand what is true, what is real, what narrative matters," said Musk, according to the Epoch Times.

He further argued the plan will "put a lot of competitor pressure on mainstream media and other social media companies to also be more truthful because otherwise they’ll simply keep losing people to Twitter.”

Musk also countered reports that advertisers are leaving Twitter over his control of the company.

He said the site will "become successful and gain share from other social media and it will force other social media to stop toeing the line."

The new Twitter, he said, will give users an "unfiltered narrative" and allow them, through tweets, to have a say in what is the story.

He argued that within the mainstream media narratives are now controlled by a handful of editors and chiefs, The Times also reports.

"The Washington Journal, the New York Times, and Washington Post and a few others decide what the narrative is," he said. "Even if what they say is completely truthful, the people don’t really get a choice in what topics are covered, whereas in Twitter, they do.

"And it could be something really important to the world and the big news organizations don’t cover it for a reason."