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The Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ (Exclusive)
So much for free speech.The studio releasing Alex Gibney’s new Elon Musk documentary Musk is finding itself unable to buy an ad on the biggest social platforms.YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and Facebook owner Meta are all declining to run the trailer for Musk, along with X itself, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.That last one is perhaps understandable, given its owner. But the rejection by the other platforms has taken distributor Bleecker Street by surprise, and it is internally scrambling to understand why the ad has been rejected, according to a person familiar with the company’s processes who is not authorized to talk about them publicly.The unwillingness of platforms to accept even paid advertising is sure to raise concerns about free speech and the dwindling number of companies that control many of the platforms in this country — and ironically provide a proof-text for the very point the film is coming to make. Gibney’s doc is a four-hour look at a title character who attempts to control the conversation in various ways, including with alleged suppressions on X, which he bought in 2022.
![(recognizing that some media outlets are traditionally viewed as conservative leaning, such as the Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and Washington Examiner, whereas others are viewed as liberal leaning, such as the Capitol Times, New York Times, and Huttington Post). Media coverage of judicial decisions warrants particular skepticism because it is often focused on perceived nonlegal issues rather than the applicable law and legal reasoning actually at issue before the court. See, e.g., Barry Sullivan and Christina Camody Tilley, Supreme Court Journalism: From Law to Spectacle?, 77 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 343, 343-344, 437-442 (2020) (concluding that contemporary media coverage of the Supreme Court by newspapers including the New York Times focuses primarily on the justices' presumed political and policy preferences rather than the legal issues they confront in the case before them, which can undermine public confidence in the Court as an institution). To be sure, "[a] publication can be accurate but still biased." AllSides Media Bias Chart, supra. But a publication that is (1)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2vtbmhmrwzbqcfv4we4uxzzt/bafkreihyk76zvt42y7ephps76zectpa7a2ot5patizomhx7vkp6ee6ye6a)
