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". 

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.