Can Twitter replace Fox News? Consider what my Twitter page looked like this morning.

By Hal Brown 

Most of you, if I have an accurate sense of my blog readers, are loathe to even click on Twitter let alone actually have an account and post their own tweets there. You probably would be one of the people depicted in the DonkeyHotey image from 2022 above. You can see how he was depicted by caricaturist DonkeyHotey (website) with an impish smile in 2012 to looking mean but oblivious in his grandiose state of smug self-delusion in 2022. 

Yet Elon Musk makes the news almost every day and now, according to a featured article in Salon this morning, wants to have Twitter replace Fox News:

I am not sure how this is possible. I doubt very many people want to turn off their televisions and use their laptops or other Internet devises to get their fix of right-wing opinion. There are ways to watch the Internet on the big screen (seeWikiHow) - but how many people are going to do this? My hunch is not very many. I tried to get my laptop to play through my smart TV with a cable I had for another purpose and after considerable trial and error I manage to get it to work. 

Then  noticed that my smart TV had an Internet setting so I was able to get Twitter there.

This may all seem like techie stuff, but in order for Musk to succeed in making Twitter an alternative to Fox News he has to have numerous people willing to take the steps to put it on their televisions. 

Given that, how many people even open Twitter first thing when they look at what's online using an Internet device? The MAGA world he lusting after, even want to follow the news, are more likely to turn on their television than go to the Internet. If he really wanted to become a media mogul like Rupert Murdoch he would be better off if he purchased NewsMax or One America News (OAN) and try to expand the number of cable stations which broadcast them. This is a bit dated being from 2021 but is relevant: Large Majorities of Newsmax and OAN News Consumers Also Go to Fox News. He'd have his work cut out for him but at least he'd have an opening to break into television.

My morning online routine is to look at my overnight email, then see what HUFFPOST has as their top story, check Raw Story for their articles which summarizes news as it breaks, I scan The New York Times and Washington Post websites, and see what Salon is publishing.

I always have MSNBC on so on weekdays "Morning Joe" is playing in the background.

Among all these sources I try to come up with an original take for my blog of the day.

For those of you who rarely if ever look at Twitter, and may see screen grabs of select tweets in various articles, below are screen grabs of my Twitter page for this morning.

Clicking images will enlarge them and not take you to Twitter.

After skimming the Salon article I thought I'd see what just going to Twitter.com looked like.

The top tweet is from Musk about DeSantis and his announcement on Twitter:

What stood out to me was the Trump-like incoherent sentence "But you what isn't noise?" I assume he meant to write "But what you hear isn't noise" ending with a period rather than a question mark. The sentence after that isn't grammatical either. What would convey what (true or not) Musk meant is that what people heard wasn't noise but rather was DeSantis setting an all-time record for fund-raising.

If you click on Find out more this is what you will see:

You will have to go to Twitter (here) to read their Community Notes Guide.

In order going down the page as it appeared on my laptop are the following mishmash of tweets. I don't know if your Twitter page would look like this. I was struck by the contrast in tweets from liberal Thom Hartmann's tweet with was second under Musk's tweet to Lauren Boebert which was the next tweet. Down the page there was a similar contrast.

While alternative platforms, one of the best known being Mastodon (below)  have tried to replace Twitter, none have lured away the well known posters on Twitter as the screen grabs show.

Today there are tweets from President Biden, Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rick Scott,  George Conway, Jim Jordan, and Barack Obama for example.

 So far I haven't seen a post on Mastodon, where I have an account where I've made 952 posts since Nov. 2022 (here) copied onto a news or opinion article they way so many tweets are.

 

Update: (Ben Collins is a senior reported at NBC News)

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