NBC News Special Investigates ‘Meltdown’ At Twitter—Can It Survive Elon Musk?

For journalists, Twitter has long been a fact of life—a place to break news, promote stories, engage and sometimes clash with other media folk, and to search for stories. And then along came Elon Musk, who has managed with breathtaking speed to plunge Twitter into chaos, raising the question: will Twitter even survive?

“It’s already failing,” said NBC News technology reporter Ben Collins. “It currently has no sustainable way to make money. Will it literally stop being a website at some point? I’m not sure, but it’s not out of the question.”

Collins has reported on Twitter—and the simultaneous collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX—and will be part of an NBC News special, “Hellscape: Inside the Meltdowns at Twitter and FTX,” hosted by Jacob Ward. “There’s nobody better to walk us through this than Jacob Ward, who is a genius. I’m very excited about it,” Collins said.

The special will feature a “reporter’s roundtable” with NBC News senior business analyst Stephanie Ruhle, CNBC technology reporter Kate Rooney, The New York TimesNYT
technology reporter Ryan Mac and The Verge senior reporter Elizabeth Lopatto sharing what they’re hearing from sources: will Twitter go bankrupt? Can it survive after the massive wave of layoffs and questions of security? And if it does survive, will it continue to be a place where people can find legitimate news from verified sources, or will it become a wild west of fake accounts and fake news?

“We wanted to produce this special on the recent turmoil in the tech industry from Twitter to FTX because a lot of viewers are trying to understand how and why it all is happening,” said Janelle Rodriguez, senior vice president at NBC News Now, who has recently expanded the network’s growing slate of original programming, including recent specials on the mid-term elections, veterans and racism.

The questions swirling around the collapse of FTX are different—but equally important: why are billionaires and CEOs—some of them, anyway—given so little oversight and often covered not as corporate executives deserving of tough questions, but seen instead as visionaries, geniuses or just characters?

The 30-minute NBC News special premieres tonight at 10:30 p.m. ET on NBC News Now (available on Peacock, Roku, YouTube and AppleTV) and will be available on demand at Peacock.