Casey Newton: It's Time to Change How We Cover Elon Musk

Before Musk, the person setting the day’s news agenda on Twitter was Donald Trump. As it became clear during his first campaign that Trump mostly did not tell the truth, the press corps gradually brought more scrutiny to the candidate’s statements. [...] Musk’s broken promises have yet to reach anything near the volume of lies that Trump told as president. But given his recent track record, it’s well past time for the press to grant him an equal measure of skepticism.

Elon and Donald share the “I need to have all eyes on me all the time” trait, and my god, yes we need to be more skeptical of everything Elon says he is going to do. Are they going to roll out that feature he just announced? Who knows, but based on recent history, probably not, and certainly not on the timeline he gives.

I’ve been trying to cover his daily bullshit less recently because ultimately much of it ends up being snarky about something he doesn’t even end up doing anyway. We should treat everything we hear with a certain amount of skepticism, but I’d multiply it by two when it comes to this guy.