Co-founder and CEO of Axios Jim VandeHei recently delivered a profane rant at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., slamming Elon Musk over his declarations that decentralized sources of news on X are the “media” now. Vandehei blasted Musk, claiming it is “bullsh*t” to suggest that content creators on X have overtaken legacy media outlets.
“Everything we do is under fire.,” Vandehei began, illustrating the dire situation for the mainstream media. “Elon Musk sits on Twitter every day or X today saying like, ‘We are the media.’ ‘You are the media.'” The journalist is presumably referencing posts on X from the multibillionaire telling prominent commentators on his site, “You are the media now.”
Lashing out at Musk, VandeHei continued, “My message to Elon Musk is bullsh*t. You’re not the media. You having you having a blue check mark, a Twitter handle and 300 words of cleverness doesn’t make you a reporter any more than me looking at your head and seeing that you have a brain and telling you have an awesome set of tools makes me a damn neurosurgeon.”
“Like what we do, what journalists do what you did in Mississippi, what Al Jazeera does in the Middle East. You proclaim yourself to be a reporter, like, that’s nonsense,” VandeHei added. “Like being a reporter is hard, really hard. You have to care. You have to do the hard work. You have to skid up every single day and say, I want to get to the closest approximation of the truth without any fear, without any favoritism. You don’t do that by popping off on Twitter. Don’t do that by having an opinion. You do it by doing the hard work.”
The clip cut to an MSNBC panel reacting to VandeHei’s comments, where Joe Scarborough applauded the Axios CEO. “First of all, I’ve got to say extraordinary content. It needed to be said. It continues to need to be said when all of the garbage is flying around on social media, lying about reporters, lying about the hard work they do, lying about the hard work editors do, lying about everything up and down, about not only their alternative set of facts, but alternative set of facts, about what people like you do,” he said.
Conservatives on social media reacted to the comments, pointing out that the American people have no reason to trust legacy media as many feel they have been misled for years. “He is so upset because he knows his audience is leaving him. They lied to everyone for years, and now they have the nerve to be upset that nobody pays attention to them any more,” Wall Street Mav wrote.
Another person said, “There’s lots of money at stake for them. Paychecks, investments in woke journalism degrees. The cachet of being a “journalist.” Poof. Gone. That’s what happens when you forget what your job is. Report what you see. Let the people decide.” Watch Vandehei’s remarks below:
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