NYT's own reporting torpedoes the entire premise of their hit piece sliming Elon Musk as pro-apartheid racist

Earlier, we told you about the New York Times’ insanely offensive hit piece intended pretty explicitly to paint him as a pro-apartheid racist.

Elon Musk grew up in elite white communities in South Africa, detached from apartheid’s atrocities and surrounded by anti-Black propaganda.

He sees his takeover of Twitter as a free speech win but in his youth did not suffer the effects of misinformation. https://t.co/bciCJDWGGP

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 5, 2022

Our jaws are still on the floor.

Ah yes… unchecked speech pic.twitter.com/q6L95eQMzp

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 5, 2022

It’s almost as if the article’s author came up with the headline first and then decided to work backward from there.

journalist curmudgeon here, but the fact that the NYT now allows headlines-in-search-of-stories to be published just blows my mind. pic.twitter.com/UNfH9WpFlb

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) May 5, 2022

Based on the headline alone, we wouldn’t blame you in the least for not wanting to give the actual piece the time of day.

And maybe the New York Times is actually counting on that in a weird way, because if you actually read the article, you’ll find that it contains passages that torpedo the entire premise. That’s what journalist Peter Hamby found when he read it:

oh, so the opposite of the thesis pic.twitter.com/QzDP5nkAHS

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) May 5, 2022

Since Elon Musk himself refused to give the New York Times any comment about his childhood, the Times was forced to look for comment from people who knew Musk as a child. And those people refuted the notion that Musk was an apartheid-loving bigot.

Also, trying to fit South African apartheid — which, as the article admits in passing, involved a lot of censorship to prop up the regime and quash dissent — into suggesting "Elon's idea of unmitigated free speech is actually bad" is… really something.

— Patrick Brennan (@ptbrennan11) May 5, 2022

The idea that the problem with apartheid South Africa was "unchecked speech"—rather than extreme censorship, propaganda, and oppression—is just remarkably ignorant.

And this is not from some rando on Twitter; it's from the New York Times' Johannesburg Bureau Chief! pic.twitter.com/ERIH4UsN6R

— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) May 5, 2022

There seem to be three pieces of specific information about Musk in this piece: He was a loner, he was bullied for chiding someone for using an anti-black slur, and he attended the funeral of a black friend when doing so was "unheard of at the time" https://t.co/f0o283d5Lo

— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) May 5, 2022

What an absolute sh*tshow the New York Times is.

So their hit piece is destroyed by their own reporting https://t.co/eNPXncmRlb

— TheUnusualSuspect ✝️ (@beerandtokens) May 5, 2022

This is incredible. https://t.co/fSEHtgIwgt

— Jeremiah Poff (@JJ_Poff) May 5, 2022

It’s incredible in that the New York Times will continue to blow smoke up their own butt about their journalistic integrity and their unimpeachable journalistic and moral standards. But this sort of “journalism” from the New York Times isn’t really all that incredible. Not anymore. This is their brand now, and we have absolutely no trouble believing that they’ll continue to find new lows to which they can stoop.

In short, it is the @nytimes that is prejudiced and bigoted, while @elonmusk was the one that showed courage.

But the left will defend the @nytimes bigotry…because they are on the right team.

I am so disgusted with all of it. https://t.co/uXFZ32ej86

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) May 5, 2022

You should be disgusted by all of it. Because all of it is disgusting.

So, in this piece, the @nytimes attacks:
– Musk as a racist (which is false)
– says South Africa was too open for free speech (which is false)
– and attacks Musk's isolationist behavior as a child, which is just outright hateful since he is on the spectrum.

Good job, everyone.

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) May 5, 2022

@nytimes is once again showing that they are not a true journalistic outlet all the time. Many times, they are simply a partisan attack machine.

They should be ashamed for this piece. Absolutely, utterly ashamed. There are legit reasons to attack Musk; this is not one of them.

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) May 5, 2022

The New York Times doesn’t care about legitimacy. That’s why they’re still around.

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with additional text and tweets.