If you are intent on peddling falsehoods to Twitter head and Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his own enterprises, you should come prepared to defend yourself from the truth.
BBC tech reporter James Clayton learned that lesson the hard way when he inexplicably confronted Musk with innuendo and outright untruths in an interview. The “journalist” was left with no choice other than to admit his mistake.
BBC ‘journalism’ at its finest 🤦🏻♂️
BBC Journo: “There’s been a rise in hatful content on Twitter.”@elonmusk: “Give me an example.”
Journo: “I can’t.”
Musk: “You just lied.” pic.twitter.com/wOfzn5vGfJ— Darren Grimes (@darrengrimes_) April 12, 2023
The face-to-face interview, described as “hastily arranged, unexpected,” took place Tuesday. It featured a testy back-and-forth between the two over false claims that Twitter became a bastion of hate speech after Musk’s acquisition of the platform.
Clayton began by parroting the leftist line that the billionaire entrepreneur allowed hate speech to proliferate.
Musk immediately asked him to provide an example of such offensive speech. The BBC reporter replied that it was “just content that will solicit a reaction, something that may include something [that] is slightly racist…these kinds of things.”
Musk countered by asking if “slightly” offensive speech should be banned, to which Clayton replied, “No, I’m not saying anything.” He went on to say his Twitter feed contains “slightly more” hate speech than it did before Musk acquired the social media giant.
The owner then simply asked, “Can you name one example?” Of course, he couldn’t. Musk, clearly amused at this point, repeated the question. “You can’t name a single example?”
The exchange got even more ridiculous when the reporter admitted that he doesn’t use the “For You” feed. He further implicated his own ridiculous position by confessing that he had not “used the feed for the last three or four weeks.”
Musk did not let up, questioning “how did you see the hateful content?”
Clayton embarrassingly stumbled and stammered about until Musk finally put an exclamation point on the discourse. “You can’t give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet, and yet you claimed that hateful content was high. That’s false.”
There’s an old saying that one should never bring a knife to a gunfight. Clearly, Clayton was far out of his league as he resorted to unsubstantiated leftist claims without being able to back up his assertions to someone who would know the truth.
If there’s a next time, he should come more prepared.
