“You are the media now.” Elon Musk’s repeated chorus on his widespread social media platform X has been his manner of urging his followers to ignore conventional journalism in favor of what he calls “citizen journalism.”
“I think the media is a driver of misinformation much more than the media would like to admit that they are,” Musk stated in an interview with the BBC in 2023. “In a lot of cases, it is the average citizen that knows more than the journalist.”
A former communications chief for X thinks in any other case. He is talking out for the first time in an unique interview with NCS and with a stern warning: Social media is not a substitute for journalism.
“The rhetoric around social platforms replacing journalism is not accurate or positive,” stated Dave Heinzinger, who labored as the communications chief at X from December 2024 by means of March 2025. He stated he left X for private causes and returned to his earlier position as president of PR agency Haymaker.
Heinzinger’s feedback stand in direct distinction to his former boss, who usually denigrates the media, claiming the mainstream media “lies relentlessly” — even chiding his personal AI chatbot Grok for giving “way too much credibility to legacy media sources.” Musk has largely dismantled his firms’ public relations groups, and so they principally shun reporters’ inquiries.
X has cycled by means of a number of prime communications employees over the final couple of years, after Musk removed Twitter’s sturdy communications store when he purchased the platform in 2022. There have been instances when journalists searching for remark or data from the platform would get an autoreply of the “poop” emoji.
X didn’t reply to NCS’s request for remark on Heinzinger’s interview.
While Heinzinger stated he believes there wants to be a “certain level of mutual respect between communications professionals and journalists,” he’s extra involved about the concept that the data deluge on social media is higher than actual journalism.
“Social media is not journalism. Social media platforms are a great place to do journalism, and there are fantastic journalists that are doing really great work on platforms, but the platforms themselves are not replacing the craft of journalism,” Heinzinger stated. “The craft of journalism is different than sharing the raw feed.”
The uncooked feed, whether or not it’s a video or a declare, can usually be incomplete or generally fully false. Musk himself has been identified to repost unsubstantiated claims, boosting them to his lots of of thousands and thousands of followers.
For instance, final yr Musk shared (and subsequently deleted) a picture of a pretend newspaper headline which parroted a conspiracy idea about the United Kingdom contemplating constructing “detainment camps” on the Falkland Islands for rioters, in accordance to the BBC. With the rise in AI-generated video, occasions can simply be faked, additional spreading misinformation.
Heinzinger declined to remark particularly on his time at X or Musk. But he stated he’s felt compelled to communicate out in the wake of latest occasions like Charlie Kirk’s assassination, during which rumors and claims unfold extensively on social media.
With “emotions flying,” it may be tough “to understand what’s real and what’s not,” Heinzinger stated. But that’s the place trusted journalists are available.
“The craft is something special and important, and it might be more important than ever,” he stated. “… That craft is something that we all need to step back and pay attention to.”
Heinzinger acknowledged that high quality journalism could come from unbiased journalists quite than conventional newsrooms. But above all else, he believes serving to the public perceive media literacy — how to discover and confirm dependable sources of knowledge and information — is a prime precedence. Platforms like X used to give journalists “verified” badges, however Heinzinger stated he’s undecided the platforms ought to be the ones deciding who is reliable.
“I don’t think that we as people should rely on the platforms to police that,” he stated. “As individuals, it’s up to us to make sure that we’re following folks that we trust, that we’re kind of curating our own feeds.”