Media Moguls and Influence: From Henry Ford to Elon Musk

An entrepreneur who revolutionized the automobile business decides he 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 encouraging enemies of democracy around the world.

This description fits Elon Musk and his social media site X in 2025, but it also describes Henry Ford and his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, in the 1920s. Ford, inventor of the Model T, purchased a suburban weekly newspaper and transformed it into a platform for his antisemitic views. The Dearborn Independent published a long-running series called “The International Jew,” which blamed Jews for the world’s problems, and promoted “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a notorious forgery. Ford’s antisemitism was so pronounced that the Nazi regime later awarded him a medal.

Ford represented perhaps the most blatant example in a long tradition of wealthy industrialists who acquired media platforms to promote controversial viewpoints. These tycoons typically leveraged cutting-edge technology to reach the widest possible audience—whether through high-speed printing presses or, in Ford’s case, his extensive dealership network.

The Dearborn Independent was distributed through Ford dealerships, with new Model T buyers finding a copy waiting on their seat. While newspapers of that era were primarily local businesses, Ford’s distribution strategy made The Dearborn Independent one of America’s highest-circulating papers, printing more than 750,000 copies per issue at its peak.

What distinguished Ford from later media magnates like Rupert Murdoch was his direct, personal approach. While Murdoch typically advanced his agenda by hiring like-minded editors and anchors, The Dearborn Independent clearly identified itself as the “Ford International Weekly” on its cover and featured full-page editorials bearing Ford’s signature.

Musk’s actions with X mark a return to this more personal approach to media influence. The Tesla and SpaceX billionaire has actively posted, reposted, and endorsed inflammatory or factually dubious claims on X—including assertions that Social Security is fraudulent, that Democrats are importing immigrants to win elections, and that federal judges ruling against the Trump administration should face impeachment.

While precedents exist for Musk’s approach, he has amplified the process to unprecedented levels. X claims he has 220 million followers—a figure impossible to independently verify. Even if the actual number is substantially lower, the platform has been optimized to broadcast Musk’s posts as widely as possible, ensuring maximum visibility and impact.

Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter (now X) in 2022 initially appeared misguided, even to him, and was later viewed as a billionaire’s expensive toy. However, during the 2023-2024 election cycle, it evolved into a powerful political weapon. Musk leveraged his political views to forge an alliance with Donald Trump, which he then used to secure a government position explicitly focused on dismantling substantial portions of the federal bureaucracy.

“This is like nothing we’ve ever seen,” says Rick Perlstein, author of a four-volume history of modern American conservatism. “It’s the politics of the nervous system, not the higher functions of the brain. There’s no argument, just fear mongering.”

The relationship between media ownership and political influence has a long history. During World War I, Britain’s Viscount Northcliffe (Alfred Harmsworth) controlled roughly 40 percent of morning newspaper circulation and 45 percent of evening circulation, including both the working-class Daily Mail and the elite-focused Times. His influence was so significant that he played a crucial role in deposing Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in December 1916, prompting Winston Churchill to observe that the press baron “aspired to exercise a commanding influence on events.” The Germans considered Northcliffe so influential they shelled his seaside home in an assassination attempt in 1917.

In the United States, media control often manifested regionally. In early 1960s West Texas, the ultraconservative Whittenburg family owned The Amarillo Daily News, the NBC television affiliate, and the dominant radio station, creating an information ecosystem with few competing voices.

“If you feed people a far-right media diet, you’ll end up with a population almost exclusively on the far right,” explains Jeff Roche, a historian who wrote “The Conservative Frontier,” a study of the region’s politics. “Amarillo became the most right-wing city in America.”

William Randolph Hearst provides another historical parallel to Musk. Hearst’s New York Journal sensationalized Cuban affairs in 1897-98, ostensibly to boost circulation during a newspaper war. While the apocryphal story of Hearst promising to “furnish the war” has been debunked, his newspaper empire exemplified media power wielded for personal ambition.

Despite his media influence, Hearst’s political aspirations largely faltered. After winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 1902, he failed twice in bids to become New York City’s mayor and lost a campaign for New York governor in 1906.

For both Ford and Hearst, their controversial media endeavors eventually proved costly. Ford faced lawsuits and boycotts over The Dearborn Independent’s content, ultimately closing the paper in 1927, though the reputational damage persisted. Hearst’s increasingly hostile editorials against President Franklin Roosevelt forced readers to choose between supporting the president or the publisher—and they chose Roosevelt, diminishing Hearst’s influence and damaging his newspaper empire.

As Tesla sales decline in 2025-26, Musk may be learning the same lesson his predecessors discovered: courting controversy through inflammatory rhetoric can damage both personal reputation and business interests. History suggests that media moguls who push extreme views often find themselves isolated from the mainstream they sought to influence.