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Elon Musk can say whatever he wants on Twitter. There is nobody at the BBC who can say whatever they want, except the government.
Can he?
"Settlement Requires Musk to Step Down as Tesla’s Chairman; Tesla to Appoint Additional Independent Directors; Tesla and Musk Agree to Pay $40 Million in Penalties"
“At the same time, however, even Musk concedes that his free speech rights do not permit him to engage in speech that is or could ‘be considered fraudulent or otherwise violative of the securities laws.'”
He won the private securities fraud action but he still had to agree to a bunch of SEC requirements in his settlement right?
Literally, intentionally false statements can have consequences. Opinions should never be banned in a free society.
He doesn’t seem too scared of financial regulators at the moment. “Dogecoin jumps more than 30% after Musk changes Twitter logo to image of shiba inu”
So he can't say whatever he wants without suffering consequences?
I would not contest that Musk has a wider swathe of things he can say without consequence, than a BBC editor but it isn't "whatever he wants".
Let me rephrase. He can say whatever he thinks. If he has an opinion, he can tweet it. If he has an idea, he can tweet it.
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No employee at any news organization can say 'whatever they want', they're subject to standards of relevance and professionalism. It isn't a good illustration of how the British Government influences the BBC to say that writers/pundits can't call the queen a cunt, because neither could writers at almost all small time American newspapers. Not because the British Government secretly controls them, but because they have voluntarily adopted professional standards that preclude it.
It’s not that each individual employee couldn’t do it. It’s that nobody at all could do it, not even in principle. Jeff Bezos could call Obama the N-word on the front page of the Washington Post tomorrow. Who could do that at the BBC? What group of people could do that? I suspect the only group that could is parliament.
If your point is that all media, even privately funded outlets, are like this in the UK, then I concede. In fact all UK outlets should have “government censored media” labels which link to an outline of the relevant laws and regulations.
I'm not trying to make a statement about the current state of British media, just calling out a poor argument. That the BBC doesn't do something (call the queen a cunt) that almost every media organization, even those not in the UK, voluntarily refrains from doing, does not provide much evidence of the level of editorial control that parliament exercises.
Any publicly traded media company would also have no individual who could call the queen a cunt without being punished by the board. If the entire board decided to call the queen a cunt on the front page they could probably be sued by share holders for damaging the company. Theoretically you could coordinate all the shareholders to approve, but that's implausible and I'm not sure why that should be a meaningful distinction between company's.
The point is 'ability to say whatever you want' doesn't practically exist at most major news companies and if you want to say the BBC as 'state owned media' is categorically different from a publicly traded American news company in a significant way you need a better example.
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