I think Balaji is more interested in having SaaS create their own Ministry of Information to do their PR instead of needing to rely on journalists who seem to be generally unfriendly to him.
He made a very early call on Covid being a serious threat and promoted masking. Recode then wrote a piece about "Tech bros too afraid to shake hands" and since then his relationship with US media has deteriorated:
Given that the Boing Boing post linked above references doxing journalists (and stuff "contravening the Geneva Convention"!) from 2012-13-14, I don't think that Covid tweet is what started it.
https://boingboing.net/2021/02/15/silicon-valley-investor-ca...