Axios CEO Jim VandeHei clearly isn’t a fan of Elon Musk’s new catchphrase that X users “are the media now,” with VandeHei calling “bulls—” during a recent press gala. On Monday morning, Musk laughed in response, saying “whatever.”
If you missed it, here’s what VandeHei had to say about Musk and the media in front of the National Press Club last Thursday:
“Everything we do is under fire. Elon Musk sits on Twitter every day – or X today – saying like, ‘we are the media,’ ‘you are the media.’ My message to Elon Musk is: bulls—. You are not the media.”
VandeHei continued: “You having a blue check mark, a Twitter handle, and 300 words of cleverness, doesn’t make you a reporter. You don’t do that by popping off on Twitter. You don’t do that by having an opinion. You do that by doing hard work.”
Prior to co-founding and leading Axios, VandeHei was the co-founder of Politico and was a political reporter for the Washington Post.
VandeHei’s comments hit Musk’s radar on Monday, with the X owner responding to a post that included video of his speech; the video also showed MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough lauding what VandeHei had to say, calling it “extraordinary content” that “needed to be said.”
Musk didn’t feel the same way.
“Yeah, whatever lmao,” Musk posted on X, the platform he bought in 2022, in response.
He added: “You are the media now. And legacy media knows it.”
Musk has been using that phrase — “you are the media” — a lot following the 2024 election, including several times last week.
The X boss — who also runs Tesla, SpaceX, and will co-head the next Trump Administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency — has leveraged the phrase while he’s been simultaneously critical of the mainstream media in recent weeks.
“The reality of this election was plain to see on X, while most legacy media lied relentlessly to the public,” Musk posted a few days after the election. “You are the media now.”
While some celebrities and media pundits have ditched X following the election, his platform’s daily user base in the U.S. has remained steady in recent weeks, thanks to an uptick in new downloads.
