Elon Musk praises Twitter for ’empowering citizen journalism’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday took to his Twitter account and praised the microblogging website for promoting participatory journalism in an unbiased manner.

“A beautiful thing about Twitter is how it empowers citizen journalism – people are able to disseminate news without an establishment bias”, the billionaire tweeted.

In response to Musk’s tweet, Chicago-based journalist Allison Rodriguez asked him if he considered local news citizen journalism.

“Have you been inside newsrooms and seen the everyday workings to make statements on news bias? Genuinely curious,” she wrote.

Answering the journalist’s question, Musk said: “Definitely closer to citizen journalism – local news orgs are under-appreciated & should get way more prominence on Twitter.”

Musk’s tweet came in response to an article published in the New York Times, titled “How Elon Musk Became a Geopolitical Chaos Agent” which said: “Elon Musk has emerged as a new, chaotic actor in global politics. The billionaire’s interventions in some of the world’s most combustible conflicts have sometimes been a boon, but his messages have also caused problems.”

Responding to the critical article, Musk copied the tweet of another Twitter user which said. “The New York Times has emerged as a new, chaotic actor in global politics. The paper’s interventions in some of the world’s most combustible conflicts have sometimes been a boon, but their messaging has also caused problems.”

Adding: “According to unnamed sources close to the matter who wish to remain anonymous”.

He didn’t stop there. In another tweet, the Tesla owner shared two screenshots from NYT stories.

“NYT is also expert at space flight, but at least they issue corrections (49 years later)”.

He also changed his Twitter bio and called himself “Chief Twit”, the slang for “a silly or foolish person.”