An entrepreneur who revolutionised the automobile business decides he now needs to change how the world thinks, so he buys a media property to use as a megaphone. His rants validate many people’s worst impulses while also encouraging enemies of democracy around the world.
This sounds like Elon Musk and his social media site X in 2025, but it was also Henry Ford and his paper, The Dearborn Independent, in the 1920s. Ford, the inventor of the Model T, bought a suburban weekly and remade it to push his anti-Semitic views. The Dearborn Independent published a long-running series called “The International Jew,” which blamed Jews for the world’s ills, and publicised “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a hoax document. The Nazis gave Ford a medal.
Ford was perhaps the most blatant example in a long tradition of moguls who bought media platforms and then used them to promote odious views. Drive off in your new Model T and there would be The Dearborn Independent on the seat. Newspapers at the time were local businesses. With the dealerships, The Dearborn Independent became one of the highest-circulated papers in the country, printing more than 750,000 copies of each issue at its peak.
The biggest difference between Ford and other media titans like Rupert Murdoch was that the latter generally promoted their views by hiring like-minded editors and anchors. The Dearborn Independent announced on its cover that it was the “Ford International Weekly”, and it included a full-page editorial signed by Ford.
Musk’s actions signal a return to Ford’s personal approach. The Tesla and SpaceX billionaire has enthusiastically posted, reposted and endorsed incorrect or inflammatory claims on X that Social Security is fraudulent, that the Democrats are importing immigrants to win elections and that the federal judges who are ruling against the Trump administration should be impeached.
There are plenty of precedents for what Musk is doing with X. But he has taken the process to a level unimaginable even a short time ago. The site says he has 220 million followers, an assertion impossible to verify. Even if it is only a fraction of that number, X has been optimised to blast its owner’s posts as widely as possible. People see them and hear about them.
Musk’s $44 billion purchase of what was then Twitter in 2022 at first seemed to be a mistake, even to him. Then it was perceived as a billionaire’s toy. In last year’s election, it became a weapon. He used his political views to form an alliance with Donald Trump, which he then leveraged to put himself into the government expressly to shut down as much of it as possible.
The repercussions are still unfolding. But for Musk, it was a clear victory. In the name of government efficiency, agencies fired regulators who were in a position to oversee his empire. Musk now has a much freer hand with his cars and rockets. (An X spokesperson did not provide a comment.)
“Media ownership and political influence have gone hand in hand since the earliest days of the newspaper industry,” said Simon Potter, a professor of modern history at the University of Bristol who studies mass media. “For just as long, people have worried about this intimate relationship between the media and politics — does it really serve the public interest?”
Ford and the other British press lords before World War II all had something in common that ultimately limited them.
“They were outside the room, screaming,” author David Nasaw said. “Twitter was important for Musk but only to get him inside the room, into the government. He’s unique in being both inside and outside with no constraints on his behaviour. There’s never been anything quite like that.”
Meanwhile, Tesla sales are plunging. Ford could have warned Musk: Courting controversy with hateful views is bad for your reputation and usually bad for your business, too.