While many of Mr. Musk’s posts, particularly those on grooming gangs, originated in the ecosystem of far-right bloggers and activists, they are also tempting to mainstream politicians in search of a cudgel to use against their opponents. And they appeal to editors and broadcasters looking for a good story.
“The British press and the broadcasters, to a degree, fell all over themselves to give Elon Musk publicity,” said David Yelland, a former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid, The Sun. “In the print press, they did it because they are extremely hostile to Keir Starmer. This is plain old Fleet Street bias.”
Claire Enders, a London-based media researcher and founder of Enders Analysis, likened Mr. Musk to Mr. Murdoch, the insurgent media baron from Australia who upended the London newspaper industry in the 1970s. “We just have a new Murdoch,” she said. “He’s American, he’s a multibillionaire, and he’s close to Trump.”
Mr. Musk, however, is not interested in taking over the British press so much as discrediting it. He claims the news media was complicit in a coverup of abuses against young girls. The truth is, British newspapers across the political spectrum did cover these crimes, if not immediately, then energetically, as the scale of the abuses became apparent in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The Times of London published a major investigation of the scandal, and the slow response to it by the police, in 2011.
“It’s been on the front page of every paper and led the 6 o’clock news for years,” said Raheem Kassam, who covered the scandal as editor of the British outpost of the right-wing news outlet, Breitbart News. “The idea that there is a media blackout on this, and we needed Elon Musk to uncover it, is nonsense.”
