While most of us were putting the finishing touches on our New Years plans or finishing the last of the Christmas ham, Elon Musk was busy slamming Nine masthead the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).
The billionaire owner of X and Tesla took aim at the newspaper after technology editor David Swan penned an opinion piece forecasting the tech landscape for 2025. In a twist that seemed to tickle Musk the wrong way, Swan predicted that Musk would step away from his role at Tesla to focus on his new government position in the Trump administration.
Musk, along with one-time Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), helping President-elect Donald Trump slash billions in expenditure.
“To be juggling leadership roles at X (formerly Twitter), Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, the Boring Company and Neuralink was already unsustainable,” the SMH article read.
“Musk now has wormed his way into Trump’s inner circle, and will jointly lead the president-elect’s DOGE. After constant controversies and distractions, it will all come to a head in 2025, and Musk will be forced to hand over the reins at Tesla, a company many mistakenly think he founded.”
Not one to let such commentary slide, Musk fired back with his own sharp prediction for 2025, writing on X to his 209 million followers he said: “I predict that the Sydney Morning Herald will continue to lose readership in 2025 for relentlessly lying to their audience and boring them to death”.
The post was unsurprisingly cheered on by Musk’s legion of online supporters.
“People hate being duped! X is the future! It could have been FB or Twitter, but their owners are/were greedy cowards. Elon Musk is a Man of the People and incorruptible,” one proclaimed.
Meanwhile, some users shared screenshots of Nine Entertainment’s declining share price, suggesting that SMH‘s readership woes were already in motion. Musk even responded to a follower’s comment agreeing that “legacy media is in a doom spiral,” further stoking the flames.
Over on his own X profile, David Swan seemed to take Musk’s public roast in stride, sharing a self-aware “Damn, roasted” post alongside a retweet of Musk’s comment.
His audience, however, was divided. One reader told him to “frame this” as a badge of honour, while others questioned the media’s credibility and accused the publication of “reporting lies” and “gearing the audience toward clickbait”.
In the aftermath of the fiery exchange, the Musk versus SMH saga has once again highlighted the evolving tensions between tech billionaires and traditional media outlets. The incident underscores the increasingly blurred lines between critique and controversy in today’s hyper-polarised media landscape.
