The events swirling around Donald Trump’s taking office for the second time are having an impact on world media.
For instance, French newspaper Le Monde says it is leaving X over owner Elon Musk’s political stance.
“The alliance between Donald Trump and social media platform bosses such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg represents a global threat to free access to reliable information,” the newspaper says is an editorial. “Le Monde has therefore decided to stop posting its content on X and increase our vigilance on platforms such as TikTok and Meta.”
It was not clear at deadline if this will have a material effect on X or the other social platforms, or if additional publications will follow suit. But here is how it is being positioned:
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Jérôme Fenoglio, editorial director of Le Monde, charges in an article that X has become an extension of owner Musk’s pro-Trump political activities, Politico reports.
"We have therefore decided to stop sharing our content on this network as long as it operates in this way, and we recommend that Le Monde journalists do the same,” Fenoglio states, according to Politico.
Given X’s ideological posture, Le Monde's content was "more and more invisible," Fenoglio says.
Fenoglio adds that “the intensification of Musk's activism, the officialization of his role within the Trumpist power apparatus, the growing toxicity of the exchanges, lead us to believe that the usefulness of our presence weighs less than the many side effects we suffer,” Politico continues.