I’ve gotten a lot of questions over the last 48 hours about the explosive story in the Wall Street Journal alleging that Elon Musk had an affair—or in peak WSJ-speak, a “liaison”—with Nicole Shanahan, who was then separating from Google co-founder Sergey Brin. (The two are now divorced.) Earlier this month, after all, Shanahan candidly offered me her first comments about the divorce, along with her post-nuptial philanthropic plans (if you missed it, catch up here). The alleged Elon relationship, obviously, never came up. 

Regardless, Elon has since called the Journal story “total BS,” while the paper said they “stand by our reporting.” There are two questions being debated in media and tech circles right now: First, who is right? And second, how is it that the dry, unofficial gazette of American capitalism is reporting on the sex lives of consensual adults? The story would have been unremarkable in other Murdoch papers, but struck some people I know as surprising in the context of the Journal. Usually the Times and Journal deliberately go out of their way when dealing with anything pertaining to sex. Even with #MeToo era coverage, where the intimate behavior was a core component of the news, they handled the sexual element with white gloves. That being said, I’ve argued divorces are often legitimately newsworthy events if they have public consequences, and understanding the factors that trigger a divorce can be too (see Melinda’s discomfort with Bill’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, for instance).