A Picture Is Worth 1000 Tweets: Elon Musk On Journalistic Integrity

News broke Sunday that The Wall Street Journal was reporting a romantic relationship between Elon Musk and Nicole Shanahan led to the divorce of the latter from Alphabet Inc GOOGGOOGL co-founder Sergey Brin.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc TSLA denied the claims from the newspaper Sunday and shared photographic proof of one item mentioned by the financial media outlet.

What Happened: The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had a brief affair with Shanahan in December 2021. Brin and Shanahan were separated at the time, according to the report, with Brin officially filing for divorce after he learned of the affair, the report later said.

One of the items mentioned in the Wall Street Journal story was the fact that Musk and Brin are no longer friendly towards each other. Brin previously provided $500,000 to Tesla when it faced financial hurdles in 2008. Musk was a regular guest at Brin’s house in Silicon Valley.

The report said Brin had asked his advisors to sell his stakes in any Musk related companies.

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Musk Responds: Tesla social media influencer Sawyer Merritt shared a picture of Musk and Brin at a recent outing.

“LMAO @elonmusk gave this picture of himself partying last night with Google founder Sergey Brin to the NYP, laughing off WSJ claims,” Merritt said referring to a story from the New York Post.

LMAO @elonmusk gave this picture of himself partying last night with Google founder Sergey Brin to the NYP, laughing off WSJ claims 😂 pic.twitter.com/apufnoi1gz

— Sawyer Merritt 📈🚀 (@SawyerMerritt) July 25, 2022

Musk replied to Merritt’s post and confirmed that the photo is from “yesterday afternoon,” referring to Sunday, July 25, the same day the story from the Wall Street Journal ran.

“A picture is worth 1000 tweets,” Musk said of the picture in question of himself with Brin.

Musk went on to question the job of media companies in reports and rumors.

“The real problem here is that @michaelsiconof has zero journalistic integrity,” Musk said in reference to Wall Street Journal Investigations Editor Michael Siconolfi.

Musk tweeted to Siconolfi with the picture and the caption that included two blank spaces and then a pants emoji followed by the word "on" and the fire emjoi, likely referring to the popular "liar, liar, pants on fire" phrase. 

A Twitter user encouraged people to read a piece from 1995 by Peter Vanderwicken, a former journalist at Time, Fortune & The Wall Street Journal titled “Why the News is Not the Truth.”

“The media is a click-seeking machine dressed up as a truth-seeking machine,” Musk replied.

Musk denied the report, previously stating, “Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night.”

Musk also said that when it comes to reports of the affair, he hasn’t “even had sex in ages.”

The Tesla CEO said the report from The Wall Street Journal could be “more shortseller fud” and said the newspaper has run several “hit pieces” against him previously.

TSLA Price Action: Tesla shares are down 1% to $806.87 on Monday.

Photo: Courtesy of Tesla Owners Club Belgium on Flickr