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buckeye broadband supports c-span as a public service along with tse other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. joining us from new york this morning is james to kobe, the pbs frontline director of a new documentary, elon musk, twitter take over. why did you decide to do a documentary about elon musk and the twitter take over? guest: i wanted to make a film to report about elon musk for a long time. kind of his purchase of twitter seems to be the right time to do it. the fact that he has been evolving politically over the past couple of years basically during the pandemic and onward and it seems this interesting

new chapter in his career and life, his politics. it also gave us the chance to some serious reporting and tell the story of the people who have been working at twitter which had been changing in the post-pandemic time. it was an opportunity to delve into an interesting strain of politics in america and also the latest chapter in his expanding power. he was involved in rockets and tesla and satellite technology. here is a move into social media and to mediate itself which is an odd move in a different move and much more about affecting the political conversation and the media and promoting his own voice to some extent and his own views on things, specifically free-speech speech in america and abroad. it just seemed like a good opportunity to delve into his story and till the story of

what's been happening with twitter. host: what you learn about elon musk? guest: a lot, he is an extraordinary innovator. he also was one of the most popular figures, political figures in america now. i have a lot of respect and reverence for what he's been able to accomplish with tesla and spacex and star link and a lot of other things. i think what happened that was interesting was that he had always been active on twitter. he has always said he loves twitter and he joined it in 2010-2011 and he has tweeted thousands of times about his observations on the world and about everything from books to technology to series of things but he steered clear of politics for a long time. then you see when the pandemic hit and tesla factories were closed during the lockdown and

he got politically activated during the pandemic. as a lot of people did in this country. learning about his political evolution and his feelings on free speech in america and abroad was what was fascinating. we can get into it but there was a lot learned here. host: i want to show one clip from your documentary. this is where you look at elon musk and how he views this platform twitter before he purchased the company. [video clip] >> space x, go for lunch -- for launch. >> it had all the elements of a perfect day for elon musk . the test launch of his latest reusable rocket, the most powerful in the world, capable of deep space exploration.

it was a crucial step toward his ultimate goal, the conquest of mars. >> elon musk gets his most pleasure out of rocket ships. at moments when the rockets go off, that's when the childish pleasure comes out. >> can you hear me over the cheering? >> he doesn't usually like having pleasure. he doesn't savor the moment but he does when it's a rocket launch. >> camera views from inside the payload very. >> throughout the day, musk provided running commentary at his favorite place to express himself, social media site twitter. >> upper stage restart nominal. >> he's a performer. he likes it. he likes playing elon musk. he thinks he is ironman. >> right on cue, the rocket discharges own cherry red tesla

complete with a mannequin in the driver seat. >> elon musk has outdone himself this time. >> a new rocket launched. it's still tripping me about. i'm tripping balls here. >> the electric car and the reusable rocket were part of a vast business empire. technology to artificial intelligence to web and satellites circling the earth that is made elon musk one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. >> space x launch control, apparently there was a car in orbit around earth. >> the app he was using to lightweight the launch would be his as well a few years let her. >> in an offer to buy twitter, elon musk. >> elon musk and twitter announced a $44 billion deal. >> he says he wants to transform the company. host: james jacoby come you also mention in this documentary more

openly about elon musk using twitter for marketing before he purchased the company for tesla, for spacex. talk about that a little bit. guest: yeah, it's fascinating. tesla does not do really any marketing. in fact, in some of their silence to the sec and elsewhere, they have mentioned elsewhere that it in part because elon musk is such a public personality and his condo is twitter that they don't really need to do any major advertising. we wanted to tell the story in part as his love affair with twitter to some extent. he has used twitter to express himself makes the joke that people use their hair to express themselves. i don't, clearly but some people may. he uses twitter to express himself.

walter isaacson spent the last couple of years with elon musk as his biographer and refers to twitter as his global pride -- playground. he line musk was bullied as a kid growing up in south africa had a tough time. and in some ways, twitter which is a rough and tumble free speech opinionated environment that musk was good at and gained a lot of followers on it and he was good at twitter. he gained a huge following and had more than one million followers. he has used it to make jokes, he's used it to go after some critics of his, but in the years before his takeover, it was a major marketing tool for him. it was a major way for him to create this cult of personality and engender an audience that liked the fact that he was unfiltered and honest about his opinions and said some controversial things, made some

funny jokes, some off-color jokes and i think people really appreciated that. it appealed to clearly hundreds of millions of people and was also in some ways fascinating to see how he used twitter and how former president trump used twitter who obviously used twitter before he was president in the way to promote himself and his brand. he was very savvy at how to do things sick simply and cleverly on the medium and elon musk, whether he was using that trump playbook or vice versa, they both really master the art of twitter. we really try to tell a little bit of that evolution at the beginning of the film. host: now that he is bought the company, is at the same effective tool for him? guest: yeah, if not more so. he is experimenting at various points with how amplified he may be on the platform. we get into a strange chapter in

that story in the film but i think this is certainly an effective tool now that he owns the platform to promote himself and his views and people he sees as like-minded. i think he also wants to bring people were not like-minded onto the platform but they generally appear to be more interested in promoting himself with similar viewpoints to him. host: we are speaking with james jacoby, the documentarian and correspondent for cbs -- for pbs frontline. he will take your questions and your comments about this documentary this morning. republicans dial in at (202) 748-8001 democrats (202) 748-8000 and independents (202) 748-8002. text us and include your first name, city and state to (202) 748-8003. you can also post onx @c-span

wj. talk about renaming the company x. guest: that happened earlier this year. he always had a vision for many years, maybe 20 years to create an overall umbrella company called x. gets his favorite letter and he loves it for different reasons he has a child he calls x. heas always seen it as an umbrella idea for what he thinks of as a super app in the same way aswe chat in china. we have many different apps on our phones for many things and elon musk wanted to consolidate things under one app. x would be a social media site, place for content creators to create content whether it's nonfiction or fiction.

it would be a payment platform. he was one of the founders of paypal. he wants to make payments more easy so that combines then my with social media app. . x was this rebrand which was a gutsy move considering twitter was immediately recognizable to eradicate twitter and createx was interesting and bold. it had its own verb. now people are rather confused as to what to say when you tweet. i don't even know what to say when it comes to x now. i think there is some growing pains when it comes to this rebrand and some confusion around. yeah, he is a long-term thinker and i think he believes we will,

at one point, decide that all these apps we have, it's too much, it's useless and futile at a certain point to keep creating them so you might as well bring them under a larger umbrella. that remains to be seen whether he can pull that off or not. host: did you talk to elon musk for this documentary? guest: he would not talk to us, unfortunately. we tried many different avenues to speak to him. he is rather particular about who he speaks to. it's hard to figure out the rhyme or reason there but clearly, frontline asks tough questions and i'm not sure he wanted to undergo the scrutiny that we bring to it. that's just conjecture, i don't know why he didn't want to purchase vaped -- why he didn't want to participate. we reached out to the executive running x and a number of other people from silicon valley are

his brain trust. for whatever reason, we didn't have much luck there. host: the frontline documentary on elon musk, twitter takeover premiere tonight at 9 p.m. eastern time on pbs and will be available to stream on frontline's website and youtube and the pbs video at. that's 9 p.m. tonight is premiering and i want to show our viewers another clip. you did speak with a current employee but what happened up -- about what happened when he took over the company. >> elon musk had taken over more than $12 billion in debt and needed to make cuts quickly. he had brought a team of friends, relatives and loyalist from his other companies to help them do just that. >> suddenly, an army of people materialized in the office that didn't have twitter nametags or computers and who started telling twitter staff what to do. the assumption was that they had some kind of authority because

elon had brought them over. they knew had to build cars, they knew how to launch rockets, they knew how to dig tunnels but they didn't necessarily know about how to run a social media company. >> teams were asked to print out code, 50 pages of code and have it reviewed by a tesla engineer. people were standing at the printer printing at their code and standing in line like a bunch of students being reprimanded by him dean and the whole exercise is not valuable. engineers who build cars to not understand the code behind social media systems. they are totally different things. that was a performance of loyalty. host: james jacoby, is x being run the same way today or has elon musk made changes? guest: it's deftly different. a few people in that clip are no

longer at the company who held important positions. the last speaker rented department that was focused on what's called ethical ai. and machine learning were basically they had an entire group of people inside twitter that was study whether the to her -- twitter algorithms were in some ways biased toward conservatives were biased toward liberals. they were studying whether there algorithms were promoting hateful content more than non-hateful content. there was a reckoning over the past five or six years with the dangers of social media, the danger of misinformation of disinformation campaigns by foreign actors like the russians. the russians during the 2016 election, the fact of their harmful effects on youth and children, there is a radicalization of young men and women in this country that's happening on social media.

chawdry is no longer there studying these issues of algorithmic bias. the other employee you heard from is the head of integrity and safety at twitter and he's no longer there. one of the big effects has been that we have this election coming up in 2024 and there is concerns about disinformation. and how prepared are the social media companies to deal with that in 2024? what we know is that there are fewer people at twitter, for instance, that are dealing with that issue than there were. elon musk might say he is creating engineering solutions to some of these problems of disinformation and misinformation and we've heard people who do this for a living that says that doesn't necessarily do much for you, you

need a lot of human moderation happening to read code and figure out whether things are misinformation or disinformation but i think part of elon musk's plan is to step back and not let social media companies like twitter have their hands on the scales when it comes to deciding was true or false. that was part of the major critique of how twitter had been run previously. it's part of the reason why elon musk wanted to buy it because he felt there was an over moderation. his belief was also that it was biased. i don't think it's true that it was biased and we challenge a number of people in the film about that. i think one of the most substantive changes that happen since elon musk took over his his trust and safety division and other things trying to promote healthy community or healthy conversation on twitter seems to a been cut back. host: washington, d.c.,

independent caller, you are up first. caller: thank you i have listened to this must promoting hatred and he's doing this or that. a bunch of fbi agent seven documentary and how the federal government was dictating what could and could not be said. you are talking about hate speech, you couldn't talk about the fact that the virus was engineered in wuhan come you couldn't talk about hunter biden and the whole family was taking bribes and soliciting funds. your hate speech is basically a form of censorship and you had a bunch of left-wing liberals in their making incredible amounts of money to make sure only the left-wing view was ever documented. host: james jacoby, your thoughts? guest: unfortunately, the facts are not on your side here.

the fact is that yes, we get into this deeply into the documentary about the pressure that was put on the company by the federal government and by federal agencies from the fbi and the department of homeland security to cdc to combat what they saw as misinformation whether it was about the election in 2020 or misinformation about the vaccines and other things. there is a lot of pressure placed on all of these social media companies as there are in traditional media companies by all sorts of actors to make certain editorial decisions. twitter it's documented pushback on a lot of these requests. i think there is a legitimate conversation to be had as to what's appropriate for certain government agencies to make certain requests and ask for certain content to be taken down or to limit its reach.

it's not true that twitter -- it was facebook, not twitter that suppressed the sort of discussion about lasting theory. they admitted it was a mistake. when it comes to the hunter biden laptop, the big mistake twitter made was that it was a new york post story three weeks before the 2020 election. that was about the hunter biden laptop and twitter suppressed that story and blocked the new york post for a couple of weeks. also a big mistake and they admitted that mistake. they assumed wrongfully that was part of a russian hack meant to disrupt the election. we are talking a complicated issues here. i think the idea that there is some sort of left-wing conspiracy to conspire with the government to suppress certain views and viewpoints, it's just not borne out by the facts. i think we need to have an

enlightening conversation about what's going on here and it's not easy, it's thorny. it's a terminus amount of power for these private companies to have to be able to moderate these big conversations in these -- in these defective public squares in which they are in. i think we have to stick to the facts on this. there are a lot of wild theories out there that really are not borne out by the facts. host: is elon musk a conservative? guest: is he a conservative? he has set in the past that he is not a conservative and that he really doesn't want to be pinned down to any particular political viewpoint. i'm not going to describe him as a conservative but he is a self-described independent and if that's how he describes himself, if you look at that tacky has taken the past two years when it comes to the

limitation of what people can and can't say, the conservative viewpoint is being suppressed on social media platforms -- i think elon musk sympathizes with that. when it comes to the fact of the matter, the counterfactual to the idea that conservatives have been suppressed on twitter is the fact that some of the biggest users we have are conservatives on twitter. some of the people with the biggest followings in the furtherance reach -- and the further most reach. there are a lot of countervailing facts to that idea but in terms of elon musk's political evil leash and -- devolution, it has become more conservative. host: democratic callers next. caller: hello, good morning. i'm going to make ralph in a little more upset.

james, when we pay taxes to give to president zelenskyy to arm him and elon musk blocks the drones that go into russia and other targeted areas to defend themselves, is that a traitor or is he not american? i don't really know. guest: i want to say that the focus of my reporting is not been on star link and what happens there in ukraine or the fact that elon musk in some ways now, some of his most powerful technology he controls is the satellite technology and remote internet technology that the ukrainian government and military have used to counter the russians in the war.

what i will say is some of the issues that have been raised by a fellow journalist about what kind of power this gives elon musk in terms of the u.s. military establishment, those are the bigger questions. i don't think it's a question of whether he's a traitor, i think it's a question of how do we find ourselves in a place where our government, the ukrainian government and military are so dependent on one company, one man for remote communications? that is a failing of a system. it's not necessarily on elon musk. it's a private company that can make certain choices but how do we find ourselves with the dod that is dependent on star link in certain circumstances? that's an accountability question i think more for government than it is for elon musk. i think the one thing we do know about elon musk is that he is

[indiscernible] and the fact is, do we want somebody like him having this much power? that's not a matter of taking power away from him, it's about our government or other government saying we need to rely on multiple different companies for certain things. i would frame the accountability a little differently as to whether he's a traitor or not. i don't think he is. host: in pennsylvania, republican, let's hear from you. caller: good morning to you both and thank you for taking my call. i want to start by saying i'm very much looking forward to watching the new documentary. i love frontline most is much as i love c-span "washington journal." the important thing with twitter recently since elon musk took over, i feel like it was starting to become a one-sided conversation.

since elon musk took over it seems like the two way street has started to open up again. i know there have been concerns with content moderation but it's a very fine line in my opinion between censorship and content moderation. speaking of which, greta, i want to say the caller from new york this morning who accuse you of being biased and a political operative, i've been a big fan for seven years and i can say that couldn't be further from the truth. i have no idea if you are republican or democrat and so. refreshing in today's media host: thank you, i appreciate that. before your answer, i want to show part of your documentary where you look at and talk to a former twitter employees and they talk about how content moderation was handled under elon musk. [video clip] >> the first time i met elon musk was a few hours after he fired my boss. i assumed i was going to be fired and i was surprised it was happening in person, but a

member of elon's team requested to meet with me. the initial perspective on his team was that turn off all access to content moderation. stop all of it., nobody moderates anything >> really? >> i explained that wouldn't be a viable approach because there is lots of types of moderation that are simply not negotiable around combating terrorism, protecting children. i suggested we not shut down those lines and he agreed. i was floored. there was a moment i had been accepting not just to be fired and walk out the door immediately but instead, i was making a recommendation to elon musk about content moderation. he agreed with me and he understood what we were trying to do. i thought for a minute, maybe it won't be as bad as we thought. >> hate speech is surging on

twitter following the elon musk takeover. >> most would soon be tested. >> he put up a bat signal to misogynists and hate speech. >> the anti-defamation league spotted a worrying trend. >> we saw a surge of toxic trolling and hate speech that just blew up on the platform days after the company was bought. host: james jacoby -- guest: that was an anecdote from early on in the elon musk tenure, having taken over the company on hate speech and how he wanted to deal with it. a lot of people at that point as you heard were testing him. he came in and said he was going to make it a more balanced conversation, that he would be more inviting of a larger swath

of the voices and it would be conservatives and liberals and he did invite some people who were very controversial back on the platform. the interesting thing is -- it's all anecdotal at this point. twitter used to be extremely transparent, much more than facebook or any the other social media companies with data about what was going viral on their platform, how hate speech was being addressed and how misinformation is addressed and how were some of the ills of social media being addressed. there was less about political viewpoints and things like that. we really don't know. the data has not nearly has been as transparent since elon musk took over. we don't know what the health of twitter is so it's hard to weigh in on what's been happening. what we know is there was a

surgeon hate speech when he first took over. the person in charge of content moderation at first was told by you on musk to get this off. they said advertising is the main revenue stream. because of these kinds of pauses or boycotts, the anti-defamation league and others are rallying advertisers to stay away from twitter. we don't really know exactly what happened. from certain people who are studying his information is that the is a rise on disinformation on twitter but we don't know all that much because the company is less transparent now. it's interesting the caller has had the experience of having -- of seeing -- of thinking there was a balanced conversation previously. i think that was the intention for elon musk when he took over. but it's very difficult to know

that. host: you can watch front lines documentary this evening at 9:00 p.m. eastern time on pbs. elon musk, twitter takeover premieres and it will be available to stream on the frontline website, youtube and the pbs video app. wayne in chester, virginia, independent. caller: good morning. i think people all over the world have to have concern about people like elon musk because he calls twitter x. if people watch the attacks from russia on ukraine, is that a coincidence? billionaires and people with big money, let's stop elon musk from putting nuclear weapons on his rockets and holding the whole world hostage do whatever he wants to do. then you got donald trump that

tried to turn this country over and you got netanyahu, him and trump went on a cruise together. i think these guys need to be regulated, these people who have money and put them in places where they can not use their money to control the rest of the world. guest: i think the letter on the ukrainian takes is a z not an x so i don't think there's a connection there. is musk a security threat? could he had put a nuke in one of his rockets? i think that's an exceedingly remote possibility. i don't believe that's on anyone's radar necessarily as a concern. going back to a previous caller

who had asked about star link and internet access in ukraine for the ukrainian government in fighting the war with russia, those are serious questions. those are very serious questions about the reliance of certain governments and military on the elon musk technology to fight their wars. in that specific case in ukraine, elon musk felt very uncomfortable with the amount of power he had. ukraine wants to launch an offensive and elon musk felt uncomfortable with his technology being used potentially to spark a third world war. walter isaacson told me and has talked about it elsewhere that elon musk is in some ways concerned about the amount of power he has. i would shift the accountability and that question two government and the military rather than

elon musk. it's up to them to find other contractors, other people. we may have too few of them but we have a few major military contractors in this country and they bid against each other and each of them has their own proprietary technology. elon musk just happened to have innovated in a space with star link in satellite technology that others weren't doing in the same way so he found himself with this huge degree of power. that really needs to be addressed. host: in hawaii, independent, good morning. caller: hello there. a couple of questions -- could you guys get some people on their aboutrob malle and the iranian connection happening domestically that may have connections to what's going on with hamas? that would be good.

we're interested in knowing about what you learned on the twitter files. this was a very interesting subject. it didn't get enough coverage. obviously, there was a lot of arguments from both sides as to what it meant and there was supposed to be some congressional investigation so i don't know what took place and maybe walter isaacson had sung the essay about that, too. host: john jacoby? guest: we do get into the twitter files in this film and you are correct, the mainstream media tended to avoid reporting on the twitter files. there was a lot of inaccuracies in the reporting and a lot of unsubstantiated conclusions. however, having said that, i think the twitter files did raise important questions that our previous call referred to

about showing the extent to which the federal government as well as various academic institutions study the problem of misinformation during elections and the pandemic, stanford university had an internet observatory there and university of washington. the twitter files writers labeled this entire thing of government and colluding with the academics and colluding with the tech companies to suppress certain viewpoints and suppress certain information in some cases, true information. they label it censorship industrial complex. whether there is truly a censorship industrial complex is really up for grabs. it's up for interpretation. certainly jim jordan and his committee in congress, what he calls the weaponization of the federal government committee, they are looking into this question. it's a very serious committee

with subpoena power and they have tried to subpoena different people from government agencies as well as academic institution studying the problem of misinformation. i think they are looking for this idea that there is a conspiracy to censor. as opposed to figuring out the balance between the harms on social media of things like misinformation and disinformation when we are in the midst of a public health crisis. what is the issue with the cdc or stanford university flagging misinformation without the covid virus to social media companies that could potentially have major consequences for their users? these are private companies. the first amendment is quite clear that the government shall make no laws to infringe upon free-speech rights in this

country. private companies have always had their own independent power. for -- the first amendment issues don't apply to them in the same way. i guess jim jordan's committee is suggesting that the federal government has actually been putting undue pressure and influence on these companies to take down certain content. in some cases, jim jordan has been buttressed by recent court cases. there is an appeals court the recently ruled that the biden administration likely violated the first amendment in its effort to curtail misinformation , especially about the vaccine. this is all going to be for out in the courts and it will likely end up at the supreme court. it's an extremely important conversation to be had. to sum it all up, i think the twitter files have been quite valuable in having raise this question about what is the

appropriate role of government in fighting disinformation by foreign actors during elections, attempting to so destruction in the legitimate results of an election. also what is the appropriate role of domestic people in united states that are without evidence, saying that elections are not legitimate. what should be the role of government when that happens, what should be the role of social media companies? these are important conversations to have. the twitter files in some ways, some of the reporting was lousy in the conclusions were hyperbolic or exaggerated. i'm not sure they did themselves a favor and doing that. they were reporting on interesting things and raising important questions. host: mary lou in a post onx - deborah in pennsylvania, democratic caller.

caller: a question -- i just wanted more clarity on the start link drone technology. i watched an interview on firing line with walter isaacson, talking about his biography about elon musk. he said regarding the drone technology, he sold that technology to the department of defense because he has an individual was uncomfortable intervening with the request by the ukraine and moving forward with that, that he sold it to the department of defense. i was asking for clarity on that. host: james jacoby? guest: i hate to say this but the focus of my reporting announcer: leaving this program here, going over to president biden talking about the hamas attackis