Tesla founder and X owner Elon Musk called out Disney's CEO Bob Iger for hypocrisy at last week's New York Times DealBook conference, where he told advertisers such as Disney who have pulled their ads from X to "[expletive] yourself," and in a post on X. Musk slammed Iger in the post for ordering Disney to pull ads from X over antisemitic material while spending millions on other sites with even more questionable content. "Iger, at last week's New York Times DealBook conference, seemed to relish X's demise," Charles Gasparino wrote in the New York Post. "He took the lead in publicly upbraiding Musk and squeezing the company's ad-revenue base even further." Said Iger of Musk: "By him taking the position that he took in quite a public manner, we just felt that the association with that position and Elon Musk and X was not necessarily a positive one for us. And we decided we would pull our advertising." The controversy arose when left-wing Media Matters discovered that certain posts on X also had branded ads, including Disney. Musk insinuated that the whole thing had been a set up, saying, "If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money. Go [expletive] yourself. Go. [Expletive]. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is ... Hey, Bob, if you're here in the audience, that's how I feel." "As for Media Matters' 'investigation,' it's about as solid as Disney's shaky stock price," Gasparino writes. "Musk's programmers say the left-wing provocateurs manufactured the situation they accused X of fomenting." He notes that Musk and his lawyers are suing for defamation. Musk's post excoriating Iger included a picture of a bar graph from The Generation Lab's recent study of social media. The survey, Deadline reported, examined the relationship between the usage of different social media platforms and the amount of anti-Israel and antisemitic material they contain. The chart's three bars show TikTok and Instagram as having more objectionable material than X. "So then why is Disney boycotting X, yet spending millions on other platforms?" Musk wrote. Disney, along with other major advertisers and media companies such as Apple, Paramount Global, and Warner Bros. Discovery stopped advertising on X two weeks ago after Musk endorsed a post that was judged antisemitic. He apologized Wednesday, then tore into the companies that pulled their ads. "I don't want them to advertise," he said at The New York Times DealBook Summit in New York, according to Deadline. "What the advertising boycott is going to do is it's going to kill the company. The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail. Let's see how Earth responds." Disney has been subject of a massive boycott since tangling with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis since the company's previous CEO, Bob Chapek, went back on a promise to stay apolitical, instead opposing the state's Parental Rights Education Act, which opponents dubbed the "don't say gay bill." Conservative boycotts of Disney ensued, especially when "woke" storylines were increasingly showing up in Disney programs and films. Iger, who had retired from Disney, was brought back on board amid decreasing stock prices and sales; and Iger was forced to admit its woke policies were behind its troubles. In September, Disney announced it was expected to fall tens of millions short of its 2024 goal for Disney+ and its streaming service Hulu, Newsmax previously reported. Customers have been fleeing Disney+ and Hulu in the wake of nationwide boycotts and sharp subscription price increases. This past summer, Disney stock had a hit a 9-year low, with its marketing cap falling from $350.09 billion on March 22, 2022, to $154.04 billion — a decline of $196.05 billion — or a 56% drop. Meanwhile, Musk has been embroiled in a battle with the left-wing NewsGuard. Musk says Newsguard prepares reports on companies, typically conservative, but does now show the results of their reports to the companies unless they pay. NewsGuard "uses these reports to pressure companies to buy their 'fact-checking' services. It's a profit over any principle model," according to a post by X on Nov. 22. "X has not seen any of the data in their report. Before publishing, we encourage all media outlets to request the data underpinning their claims." After the X posting, Musk posted to his account, "In other words, 'NewsGuard' is a propaganda shop that will produce any lies you want if you pay them enough money." Publicis Imagine is the media agency for Disney+; Disney Parks, Experiences and Resorts; and ESPN/ESPN+, according to Publicis Imagine's Linkedin page. The NewsGuard partnership allows Publicis Groupe "to provide its clients with more responsible, trustworthy advertising platforms and content opportunities to combat the 'infodemic' in media," according to a NewsGuard news release. NewsGuard was founded by Steven Brill, a Democratic activist and donor, in 2018. The group's rankings have since been used by advertising agencies to target and block conservative media from obtaining advertising revenue. Michael Katz | editorial.katz@newsmax.comMichael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics. © 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved. |
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