While many of Musk’s posts, particularly those about gang-baiting, originated in the ecosystem of far-right bloggers and activists, they are also a temptation for mainstream politicians looking for a cudgel to use against their adversaries. And they turn to editors and broadcasters looking for a good story.
“The British press and broadcasters, to some extent, have gone out of their way to publicize Elon Musk,” said David Yelland, former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid, The Sun. “The press has done it because it is extremely hostile to Keir Starmer. This is simply old Fleet Street prejudice.
Claire Enders, a London-based media researcher and founder of Enders Analysis, compared Musk to Murdoch, the Australian rebel media baron who shook up London’s newspaper industry in the 1970s. “We just have a new Murdoch,” he said. “He is American, he is a multi-billionaire and he is close to Trump.”
Musk, however, is not so much interested in taking control of the British press as in discrediting it. She claims the news media has been complicit in the cover-up of abuse against young girls. The truth is that British newspapers across the political spectrum covered these crimes, if not immediately, then at least energetically, as the scale of the abuses became apparent in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The Times of London published a major investigation into the scandal and the slow police response in 2011.
“It was on the front page of every newspaper and led the 6 o’clock news for years,” said Raheem Kassam, who followed the scandal as editor of the right-wing British outpost of the news outlet, Breitbart News. “The idea that there is a media blackout on this, and that we needed Elon Musk to find out, is nonsense.”