Tesla + SpaceX today have a combined market cap of 3-trillion$-plus and Elon Musk is the world’s richest man (with a verified net worth estimated to be over 1trillion$). What almost nobody in the mainstream media has spoken about (possibly out of embarrassment) is that for nearly 7 years now, Tesla has made reporters and mainstream media irrelevant for its external communication.
Since late 2019, the press@tesla.com email id had stopped responding to reporters. In October 2020, Tesla officially dissolved its PR department, effectively formalising their informal policy of ignoring reporters & mainstream media. Keely Sulprizio, the last person known to officially be in charge of PR/communications at Tesla, left the automaker in December 2020. Tesla still has a few PR people on the rolls, but their role is primarily reaching out to & arranging test-drives / promotions for YouTubers & social media influencers.
Elon Musk personally does almost no mainstream media interviews but has chosen to go onto radio shows and podcasts of individuals he likes like Joe Rogan & Lex Friedman and occasionally on comedy shows like Jon Stewart.
The very few mainstream media interviews which he has done have been extremely combative, where he has wiped the floor with agenda-driven-journalists. Case in point – check out this compilation of excerpts from a 2023 BBC interview.
The entire interview is here –
Another example is this conversation with CNBC…
Please note that in October 2020, Tesla + its associate companies market-cap was 400bn$. Today, it is around 8 times that. It is clear that Musk’s strategy of ignoring reporters and mainstream media has made zero difference to the group’s stock prices or market cap.
We are living through a historic, technology-fuelled shift in the balance of power between the media and its principals. And the principals are winning.
The internet in general, and social media platforms in particular, have destroyed the ‘mainstream’ media’s source of power – ACCESS – they being the only place that could offer its principals access to an audience. That’s now gone. If a Elon Musk can say whatever he wants to 240 million X followers & the same is amplified both by news aggregators and the 240mn people who follow him, exponentially expanding its dissemination, then it is little surprise that he does not feel compelled to waste time responding to reporters.
Mukesh Ambani (India’s richest man worth 110bn$) has done an average of 1-2 media interactions, including chats at media business summits each year since 2021. The RIL Annual General Meeting continues to be highly anticipated and is one of India’s most-watched-live financial events, second only to India’s Annual Budget. Reliance Group’s market cap is 220bn$ and has grown 310% in the past 5 years. The group is India’s market leader in Energy, Communication and Media & Entertainment. Which is ironic, given how little Mukeshbhai interacts with mainstream media.
It is crystal clear now that popular / well-followed-on-social-media people no longer need to suffer ‘mainstream media’, and they especially don’t need to suffer those with agendas. This presents a problem more for the media than them. If the mainstream media is left to simply copy-paste information from the company’s social media handles, why would anyone value them more than they value a news aggregator? Media still needs access to popular and powerful people, to offer them up to audiences, so that the audiences remain their viewers/readers. Very very few among the media are so good journalistically, that people will read / watch their content only for its editorial / opinion value, even if they do not provide access / ‘inside info’ to popular & powerful people.
PM Modi is (per Morning Consult) the most popular world leader currently with an ‘approval rating’ in the 68-70% range. He has won 3 elections in a row and the BJP governs over 78% of Indian states which house over 72% of India’s population.
PM Modi is also the most followed person on social media in India (he has a combined following of nearly 300 million across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube – 107mn + 57mn + 102 mn + 30mn), and with his Mann ki Baat radio address, he has the ability to reach out, directly, potentially to 1.4bn Indians all at the same time (radio has 95%+ penetration in India). He has made avoiding mainstream media until it is absolutely necessary into an art form, so that, when he does do the very few interviews that he does, mostly around general elections, they carry so much more weight & value.
He has had zero press-conferences over the past 12 years, and his media interactions are a restricted to a few select interviews. His public presence however is significant. From election rallies & roadshows to public conversations like Pariksha pe Charcha, interactions with YouTubers / influencers, the Mann-Ki Baat addresses and speeches at Summits / Conclaves organised by media groups.
This combination of high public engagement with very low mainstream media exposure has been enough for him to get his message out and be elected India’s Prime Minister 3 times.
In the case of India’s newest Chief Minister – Joseph Vijay – he has gone even more radical with his media avoidance stance. His party, which is barely 2-yrs-old has won India’s most industrialised state and Vijay is today Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
Vijay has intentionally avoided mainstream media, preferring instead to connect with the public through direct speeches at mass rallies and party events. He has thousands of fan clubs across TN and through them & their WhatsApp / Telegram groups, he is able to reach out directly into people’s phones. While he did make promotional appearances alongside the crew for his 2024 film The Greatest of All Time (GOAT), he did not conduct one-on-one sit-down interviews or press meets even at that time. He has had zero interactions with mainstream media (Tamil media, national media – nothing, zilch!). He has not even made an official casual comment to any TV channel, reporter or journalist in the past 2 years. Even when there were controversies around his personal life, he did not engage. This has got to be the most active shunning of mainstream media ever done by a politician. And despite all this, he has still won and is currently Chief Minister.
The case of PM Modi, CM Vijay & Mukesh Ambani is unlike Tesla in one aspect. BJP, TVK & Reliance, unlike Tesla, all have super-active organisational PR departments and social media cells (the infamous BJP IT Cell included). So while mainstream media has little or no access to the top man, they do get responded to by the organisational communication machinery. In the case of Tesla, Musk has broken down that link as well. No institutional contact with mainstream media. His X feed and that of the companies is all they get.
That it is happening is not at all surprising for me. And IMO, this reflects much more poorly on the media than on the principals. And is a glaring example of what can happen to a compromised & static entity like the mainstream media in a world as dynamic as today’s. Most media has sold out to a side or the other. So, those with direct access to the people do not want any filter between their words and their recipients. Especially if that filter is coloured with an agenda. I’m not saying that it is the ONLY reason for such media avoidance, but IMO, it is definitely one of the primary reasons.
Incidentally, PM Modi, before he became PM, was extremely engaging with the media. He used to be a regular on news debates, conclaves & summits and was always available for media interviews. It all changed over the 2002-2012 decade when he was heavily vilified – IMO completely inappropriately and in a highly politically partisan manner for the post-Godhra Gujarat riots – by the mainstream media, for reasons best known to them. His mainstream media interactions & interviews before 2012 were plenty, fiery and extensive. After 2014 – ZERO.
Now the media may raise all the questions they want about this lack of access to Musk, Modi, Ambani & Vijay and go full-tilt rudaali on how elected leaders are not doing press conferences and the media is ‘the 4th pillar of democracy’ and blah blah bah, etc, but before they do that, they should look inwards and ask if they themselves are to blame. When media organisations sell their journalism, hold on to dogma (despite reality being contrary to their dogma), regress into peddling agendas, they demolish their own credibility, usefulness and hasten their journey of being relegated to the dustbin of irrelevance.