Why We All Need X (aka Twitter)

Mainstream media is broken, corrupt & captured.

Two evenings ago some people, my husband included, knew about the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump almost instantly. Because they were looking at X (formerly called Twitter).

Individuals who rely on the mainstream media only became aware of this enormously significant and newsworthy event hours later. Why? Because the news industry is broken, corrupt, and captured. As a former mainstream media journalist, part of me still finds this difficult to believe and difficult to say. But it’s the truth.

Readers of this Substack know that media lies and distortion were a huge problem for the Freedom Convoy. I personally talked to individuals while I was in Ottawa who’d come to town with one purpose: to see things for themselves. With their own eyes. They weren’t sure what to think, because what they were seeing on social media differed so dramatically from what they were seeing on television screens and the front page of newspapers. (A young woman in Ottawa by accident describes her eye-opening experience here.)

This past Saturday evening, the lies and distortions were breathtaking. CNN told the public Mr Trump had been rushed off stage by the Secret Service not because he’d been shot at and had blood on his face, but because he fell. The Washington Post implied he’d been scared away by loud noises. USA Today similarly declared that the former president left the stage after being startled (its word) by loud noises.

If freewheeling coverage, discussion, and analysis hadn’t taken place on X as events unfolded in real time, there’s a reasonable argument the public might not even know an assassination had been attempted. See Jeffrey Tucker’s essay During the Crisis, Free Speech Worked Brilliantly.

X/Twitter isn’t perfect. It has a host of shortcomings. But the events of the past few days strongly suggest we have little hope of any honest news coverage without it.

Elon Musk, owner of X, calls out the New York Times below. Mr Trump had just escaped death. By an inch or so. Mere hours earlier. His 18-year-old son had nearly become fatherless. A spectator at the event had been killed on the spot, while two others had been hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

And this is what the Times had to say the very next morning: