It’s rare for a journalist to be an incidental witness to a newsworthy event. But it happened to me last week at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne when a heckler disrupted a performance by English musician Thom Yorke.

Citizens on X broke the news, and on Wednesday, their owner, Elon Musk, proclaimed that they now write the first draft (or record the first video) of history.

Thom Yorke, captured on video responding to a pro-Palestine heckler.

X got it wrong in Melbourne by missing the telling details and joining the wrong dots. Or maybe, by exaggerating the disruption and reporting that the Radiohead frontman downed tools after being interrupted by a pro-Palestinian protest, X was true to its algorithmic mission. A false narrative made headlines around the world, cut and pasted by news outlets who weren’t there. Its effect was to again divide audiences into shouty pro- and anti-Israel encampments. Which means more audience engagement; so X, in getting it wrong, got it right for Musk’s purposes.

No offence to Musk and his democratic news organisation, but here’s what really happened.

Yorke played 20 songs over two hours. He had finished, come back for an encore, played another two songs, and then announced one more. He played the first chords of Radiohead’s iconic Karma Police.

At this point, a man in the extremely expensive seats near the front stood up and began shouting. Only a few dozen people surrounding him could hear what he was saying. Nobody where I was, up in the cheap standing room on the grass, could detect more than........

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