This, but there are more factors at play. Successful CEOs are often well spoken, have had plenty of press training, and usually have all the power in the conversation. Getting answers questioned is a privilege, not a right, unless you work in certain areas of law enforcement.
When bad things are on the horizon, CEOs have a little story ready to go, together with the surprise questions that may come up during the interview, or they don't come to interviews at all.
At a certain point, people collect enough money that press coverage is no longer much of a concern for them. Jobs, Musk, and other super rich don't need the validation and even manage to build a cult centered around their personality. As long as they say the right things to their key shareholders and don't start spouting unacceptable language that their core fan base disagrees with, it doesn't really matter if they come to interviews or not.
Private interviews are not a level playing field. Press conferences come closer, because more reporters means having to deal with more and less obvious questions.
It's not hard to be impressed by a young crypto billionaire if you have little to no knowledge about the platform and if their company keeps all the business details behind closed doors; for years, these people were actually running a moderately stable cryptocurrency business. Reporters couldn't know about how deep the company had sunk when the debts started to come in and a bunch of young people in bean bags managing billions of dollars for millions of people are doing something right; all they need to do is make the reporters comfortable and lie about or avoid the upcoming collapse and journalists are bound to write something positive about you.
When bad things are on the horizon, CEOs have a little story ready to go, together with the surprise questions that may come up during the interview, or they don't come to interviews at all.
At a certain point, people collect enough money that press coverage is no longer much of a concern for them. Jobs, Musk, and other super rich don't need the validation and even manage to build a cult centered around their personality. As long as they say the right things to their key shareholders and don't start spouting unacceptable language that their core fan base disagrees with, it doesn't really matter if they come to interviews or not.
Private interviews are not a level playing field. Press conferences come closer, because more reporters means having to deal with more and less obvious questions.
It's not hard to be impressed by a young crypto billionaire if you have little to no knowledge about the platform and if their company keeps all the business details behind closed doors; for years, these people were actually running a moderately stable cryptocurrency business. Reporters couldn't know about how deep the company had sunk when the debts started to come in and a bunch of young people in bean bags managing billions of dollars for millions of people are doing something right; all they need to do is make the reporters comfortable and lie about or avoid the upcoming collapse and journalists are bound to write something positive about you.