Elon Musk v Mishal Husain = Frost v Nixon
The BBC presenter-turned-Bloomberg editor made news. It has largely been ignored.
Imagine if David Frost had gotten Richard Nixon - or at least Haldeman or Ehrlichman - to sit for an interview in the middle of Watergate. Well, yesterday the equivalent happened at the Bloomberg-organised Qatar Economic Forum.
First, context.
Musk was beaming in remotely from Austin to the event in Doha. These events, particularly when hosted in gleaming Gulf cities, are not typically news-making affairs. Having worked in the region, these are usually events that are expected to be conducted with the precision of a Swiss watch and about as exciting. 1
When these events do make actual news, not a tightly-choreographed narrative everyone knows the ending of before it even starts, the news is not usually planned.
When Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman hosted his “Davos in the Desert” Future Investment Initiative event in 2018, it was the circumstances surrounding the grisly murder of Washingt…
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