No! Elon Musk is not bidding for CNN, news was satire
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and world’s richest man who owns X (Twitter), has not made a bid for CNN – the liberal network that claims more people “get their news [from its platform] than any other source,” and a counterweight to the falsehoods of conservative Fox News – contrary to the rumour that sent shockwaves around the world last week, according to fact-checking by USA TODAY.
Musk, an ally of Donald Trump who spent millions of dollars on his reelection as United States President, is a bigoted hard man, like Trump, and owing X along with another powerful media outlet like CNN would have concentrated overwhelming influence in the hands of Musk and his friend, both of whom openly spread racist views.
To highlight the daring nature of Musk, he rails against legal and illegal immigrants in the US, a country where he was once worked as an illegal immigrant, after he was born in South Africa.
Trump too threatens to embark on the “largest mass deportation of immigrants in history” whereas his father was the son of a German immigrant man to the US, his mother an Irish immigrant, all his three wives were/are immigrants, including Melania his current wife, her father is an immigrant who obtained citizenship during his in-laws first presidency.
All of Trump’s five children were born by immigrants wives.
So, to add CNN to the mouthpieces of the two hypocrites and racists would have been too dangerous for the rest of the world – plus America itself.
But below is the story first published by USA TODAY that lays the rumour to rest, at least for now.
Claim that Musk agreed to buy CNN started as satire
“Elon Musk Agrees to $3 Billion to Buy CNN,” reads the post’s caption. “Elon Musk Reportedly Eyeing CNN Acquisition: ‘I’ll Fix the Media, One Network at a Time.’”
It was shared more than 2,000 times in two days. Other versions of the post were shared hundreds of additional times.
Our rating: False
The claim originated as satire. There is no evidence that Musk has made an agreement to buy CNN for $3 billion.
Musk, the world’s richest person, completed a deal to purchase Twitter, which he later renamed X, for $44 billion in October 2022. However, there is no evidence that Musk has agreed to acquire CNN for $3 billion, as the post claims.
The claim was posted on Facebook on Nov. 4 by a satirical account called Gridiron Glory, which labels itself as satire. The post links to a Nov. 4 article that repeats the claim but provides no evidence to support it.
Musk hasn’t mentioned anything similar to the claim on his X account, nor has CNN, and there are no credible news reports of such an agreement.
The post is an example of what could be called “stolen satire,” where claims written as satire and presented that way originally are reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.
In April 2022, about six months before Musk took control of Twitter, Discovery completed a merger with WarnerMedia, forming Warner Bros. Discovery, which is now CNN’s parent company. Warner Bros. Discovery hasn’t announced any agreement involving Musk and CNN.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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