Under pressure from Wall Street and facing a torrent of negative headlines, beleaguered mega-billionaire Elon Musk mounted a concerted Twitter campaign against the media on Wednesday. “The holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them,” he tweeted, seemingly in reference to recent Tesla coverage. And when Andrew Hawkins, the Verge’s transportation reporter, replied—“Musk continues his slow transformation into a media-baiting Trump figure screaming irrationally about fake news”—Musk seemingly became even more incensed. “Thought you’d say that. Anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks ‘You’re just like Trump!’” he wrote. “Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no ones believes you any more. You lost your credibility a long time ago.” (“This... So true!!!” Donald Trump Jr. helpfully replied.)

Musk’s Twitter meltdown, in which he decried reporters’ stories as fake news intended to sabotage his businesses, follows the publication of an investigation last month from Reveal, the editorial arm of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting, which included multiple reports of safety issues at Tesla factories brushed under the rug by management. (“In our view, what they portray as investigative journalism is in fact an ideologically motivated attack by an extremist organization working directly with union supporters to create a calculated disinformation campaign against Tesla,” reads a statement Tesla gave to Reveal before the story was published.) When a ProPublica reporter defended Reveal on Wednesday, Musk retorted, “[T]hey’re just some rich kids in Berkeley who took their political science prof too seriously.”

Continuing his rant, Musk then accused reporters of attempting to score clicks by any means necessary, and implied that outlets are flooded with ad money from car companies whose vehicles run on fossil fuels. “Tricky situation, as Tesla doesn’t advertise, but fossil fuel companies & gas/diesel car companies are among world’s biggest advertisers,” he said before threatening to launch a Web site that would assign reporters and news outlets a “credibility score,” an idea that has been tried time and again to varying degrees of success. “Even if some of the public doesn’t care about the credibility score, the journalists, editors & publications will. It is how they define themselves,” he said, tweeting out a poll that asked if he should “Create a media credibility rating site (that also flags propaganda botnets),” with two options: “Yes, this would be good” and “No, media are awesome.” (In fact, Musk may be taking the venture seriously— “Thinking of calling it Pravda,” he tweeted, a name that one of his agents reportedly incorporated in California in October of last year.)

Much like the rest of Silicon Valley’s wunderkinds, who are coming to grips with their own bad headlines, Musk has enjoyed years of mostly glowing media coverage. Tesla was a novelty when it launched; so, too, was SpaceX. Both ventures, coupled with Musk’s own swashbuckling attitude, earned him press that raised his profile as an entrepreneur, and leagues of devoted fanboys who sing his praises at every opportunity. Readers were inherently interested in Musk’s innovations, which shocked and awed, even when they failed.

Now, of course, the tide has turned. As tech companies have grown into global behemoths, their fumbles have led laymen to second-guess entrusting such massive power to so few C.E.O.s. Tesla, too, has hit its fair share of speed bumps; the company, the heart and soul—and most viable revenue source—of Musk’s business operation, is facing an investigation by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after the recent crash of a Tesla vehicle in Utah, not to mention looming Model 3 production deadlines and controversy over the treatment of its workers. The stress drove Musk to berate analysts on an earnings call earlier this month, costing the company billions (its stock dropped as much as 5 percent in after-hours trading that day). Musk’s most recent tirade is both a reaction to and an example of the downside to fame and fortune: your bad news earns just as much coverage as your good.