Opinion: Trump-Musk Chat Shows Innovation Alone Can Save Legacy Media

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