Reuters' story about title Elon Musk lost was 'a very short-lived celebration for the media'

Doug P. | 2:20 PM on December 07, 2022

Reuters has proven itself to be a media outlet that’s always on the lookout for any negative angle they can take when reporting about Elon Musk, and this morning they found something, but it didn’t last long (we’ll get to that in a second):

Twitter owner and Tesla boss Elon Musk lost his title as the world's richest person, according to Forbes, following his expensive bets to buy the social media firm and selling stocks of his electric-car company to fund the $44 billion deal https://t.co/YSp0OtpZNj

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 7, 2022

“Musk lost his title as the world’s richest person”? Wow, according to Reuters, Musk is finis…. Oh, wait:

Twenty-six minutes later they added a tweet to this thread saying Musk was back at number one. A very short-lived celebration for the media. 😂 https://t.co/LbbLSHWk89

— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) December 7, 2022

It must have nearly killed somebody at Reuters to have to reel that one back in quickly:

Musk is back at No. 1. He briefly lost his title as the world's richest person, according to Forbes, following a steep drop in the value of his stake in Tesla and a $44 billion bet on Twitter, but Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH and his family were back at No. 2 shortly after pic.twitter.com/GL8NY5b3YM

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 7, 2022

LOL.

Reuters had to put “briefly” in the story after just a few minutes:

Twitter owner and Tesla (TSLA.O) boss Elon Musk briefly lost his title as the world’s richest person on Wednesday, according to Forbes, following a steep drop in the value of his stake in the electric-car maker and a $44 billion bet on the social media firm.

Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury brand Louis Vuitton’s parent company LVMH (LVMH.PA), and his family briefly took the title as the world’s richest, but were back at No. 2 with a personal wealth of $185.3 billion, according to Forbes.

Musk, who has held the top spot on the Forbes list since September 2021, has a net worth of $185.7 billion. Musk took over the title from Amazon.com (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos.