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Published on October 13, 2018 |
by Zachary Shahan
October 13, 2018 by Zachary Shahan
We have some topics to CleanTechnica so important that we cover them from several angles. It's like putting together the pieces of a puzzle to give a complete picture. However, at some point, you need to step back to have an overview – and you far back if the puzzle is big.
Roger Pressman wrote the best article I read about "The Tesla Smear". It superbly covers the various interests that may be at stake or are really at stake, trying to bring the image of Tesla to the public eye.
Peter Forman (aka Papafox) just wrote the best article I've seen about how short sellers manipulate Tesla's stock (including illegally) in an attempt to reduce it.
The story of Tesla is a third major player who deserves a careful, nuanced and thoughtful look. It's the media. And no, the idea here is do not just criticize the media for doing a shitty job of covering Tesla. The idea is to try to understand why big media members participate in The Tesla Smear and why so many journalists and editors act as pawns of billionaires short sellers, of the industry oil and the automotive industry in general.
The other day, I wrote a joke article listing the potential reasons why the media is reporting so negatively on a successful American and societal success story. After reading several comments, I realized that some people treated him more than just a joke and added real reasons why the media coverage was so bad. So, to be clear, I think the following is what is really happening in the media and their coverage of Tesla.
Before we go into the details of the puzzle, we must take giant back. What is the purpose of the puzzles? OK, avoid riddles, but think for a moment: what are the media for?
The media, ideally, is a fundamental pillar of democratic and semi-free market societies. In the ideal version of a democratic society and a free market society, all citizens have complete knowledge. Of course, none of us really have a complete knowledge of reality, but the idea is that we will be better if we have more information and knowledge.
The role of the media is to investigate and filter huge amounts of information in order to bring this information to the public. To be effective, the media must also know how to tell stories and attract attention, but we must not forget that its main purpose is to gather useful information to the public.
Too many things nowadays, the media world has turned into clickbait stories without solid substance or actual use for the public. The obsession of celebrities is a strange and extreme aspect of that. Even though "reporters" may claim to be on top of that, they often follow the same pattern but focus on "the nonsense of business celebrity". need to chase away clicks, the goal of journalism is often lost. Just by quickly searching for "Jeff Bezos", I find this at the top of the list: "There is a clear sign that Jeff Bezos is researching to gauge how smart people are." The Big Revelation? People who want to change their minds based on evidence are smart. Wowza! Business journalists too often write this kind of story.
The piece "Tesla Hit Billion in Billions of Dollars," as Papafox calls it, was a New York Times-A stylish version of this document with a special focus on distorting the history and atmosphere of history. The telephone interview was the same day as this video interview with MKBHD. If you check both, you see a very different picture of Elon. One of them caused a massive fall in the Tesla stock. The other, the one who filmed Elon on video for a long time, described it in a very different way. Which one was more precise? What was the most useful for society?
But let's not get too carried away for the moment. Let's go back to another part of "the big picture".
As all those who follow climate science know well, we are screwed. Honestly, we are already fucked. And we are so close to the human race that a smarter alien species might wonder if we all use psychotropic drugs that make us unaware of the reality that presents itself to us. (Oh, well, I guess that may be the case, but we will not go there.)
Overall, the public does not understand the severity of the crisis (this is why climate scientists have tears in their throats every time you see one of them on television – which is extremely rare). The media, whose task is to convey the most important information to us in a convincing way, has lost the plot and largely ignored the history of the century. Catastrophic climate change is perhaps the society's # 1 challenge and the media treat it as a groundhog story that you tell once a year for about 3 minutes and 27 seconds.
If the media did their job honestly and tried to explain the surprise that awaits us in the destruction of society, Armageddon, we would act much more quickly and forcefully and we would not have received this new report from hundreds of climatologists .
And if you take the time to look beyond the disasters we are likely to face this year, next year, in 10 years, and the global warming and climate change that will result in the next century , the story can become serious. The IPCC report released this week indicates a short deadline for action to prevent irreversible global warming. If this is really where we will land, it is possible that we are pushing the planet to such an extent that human beings can die in some places just by going out. It could really reach the point where it's so hot in some places that you're really going to fry to death if you go out.
What does all this have to do with the media coverage of Tesla? A good deal.
First, if the media were very interested in climate history and were sincerely trying to do their job, it would include mentioning our climate challenge and our future in so many stories – stories about politics, oil, natural resources. gas, and, yes, about Tesla.
The media should understand the most important actions that society should take to extinguish the furnace: electrify transport, extinguish coal and natural gas plants and stop cutting down forests (which essentially means reducing production and meat consumption).
With this understanding implanted in the brains of journalists and publishers, and with a clear goal to help society solve this problem (a goal they should certainly have, no matter how many times you hear people repeat the false mantra of the "objective, unbiased" statement on topics like this), the media would repeatedly point to the role of some companies in accelerating the transition to clean, sustainable, zero-emission transport – or trying to slow down the transition. In addition, the media would frequently communicate the role of some companies in accelerating the transition to clean, sustainable and zero-emission technologies. sources of electricity. And it turns out that Tesla is involved in both.
No company is pushing the transition to cleaner transportation faster, stronger, more convincing and more efficient than Tesla. In addition to demand in the market for electric vehicles and the production of electric vehicles, there is one important point that we can not quantify: other car manufacturers would not have such serious plans for electric vehicles if this is not the case. was Tesla. This can be documented and proven to some extent, but we do not really understand how far Tesla has accelerated Volkswagen's transition to EVs, Daimler, BMW, Volvo, Geely, etc.
Nor can we say how much Tesla has stimulated and strengthened government policies on electric vehicles or transportation. Tesla recorded the largest product launch in history with model 3. No product in history has attracted consumer interest (in dollar value) for a product on the opening weekend. Hundreds of thousands of consumers are spending $ 1,000 in a few weeks to be able to queue for a car they have to wait for years. This consumer interest has been noted by government leaders. They realized that the tired and convincing conversation topic of the auto industry, namely that consumers did not want electric cars, was great. They realized that they could keep, start or push for strong electric vehicle policies because the sector could deliver the desired results if it really wanted to, and because consumers wish it.
Brilliant summary by Michael Liebreich
To what extent are China's strong electric vehicle policies motivated by Tesla's success? We do not know, but I guarantee that they are partly motivated by this. I guarantee that Chinese leaders were impressed by Tesla when they learned about the existence of the company and that it helped them to take the lead in this industry of the future, an industry which offers economic benefits, health benefits, climate benefits, quality of life benefits, etc. . Not respectful of a strong national oil industry, the good news is that China has been able to act with force, determination and quickly on this topic.
I just finished an amazing 3 day visit to China. The world has never seen human energy and vigor on such a scale. Incredibly impressed by the Tesla China team and its potential for the future.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2018
Again, all of the above is a context that members of the media should understand, communicate with their readers, and use to put other news into an appropriate perspective.
This directive is unfortunately idyllic and unrealistic. It is so far from the media that this is not the best starting point for really discussing what is wrong with the relationship between the media and Tesla.
But before addressing the anomalous issues between Tesla and the media, let's quickly review some common issues that also affect the media:
- The media tends to focus on short-term negative issues rather than notable successes.
- The media industry has been in a bit of a financial crisis since publishing became free and billions of people started doing it in large numbers, competing effectively with mainstream media. This has led to layoffs, less specialized journalists and less time for proper research and work.
- No major media will have a staff member who has followed obsessively, carefully and attentively a clean technology company for a decade. (Well, technically, they might choose to hire such a person, but it seems they have no interest in doing so.)
- When a company or person is at the top of the world for a while, the media tends to demolish it. Why? Because.
- In-depth public financial analysis, forecasts and "futurism" are not part of the media repertoire. So, they are referring to "experts" for that. However, they seem to have a hard time dismissing experts with strong vested interests who are more apt to shape a story than to tell the full truth.
But now that we have solved all the problems that will almost certainly not be solved, let's look at some of the mistakes the media made about Tesla that led to this point, as well as some of his mistakes.
First, it seems that many media are confused about the hundreds of thousands of bookings that Tesla has made for model 3 or just do not know what to do with it. They often failed to recognize that there was a huge demand accumulated for clean, zero emission, properly designed and designed electric vehicles. They have fallen into the trap of repeating the same message several times: "Tesla's demand for vehicles may not be there." I'm not sure why they keep cracking for that, but it's been years since Tesla's media coverage is a problem that should be dropped before it becomes more absurd.
Well, I think we actually know where this is coming from. They collect it from short sellers, from short sellers, from threatened competitors, and from overly pessimistic skeptics who try to spread a certain story. And that's probably the # 1 problem. They have adhered to the illusion that threatened competitors and short sellers (who are in all media for whatever reason) express honest and accurate criticism . Now, if these reporters had been covering Tesla closely since the Roadster or Model S days, they would see the pattern of arguments and realize that they were being recycled year after year, even though they were never accurate and should not be # 39; be. Instead of ignoring such demands, absorb them and expel them month after month, year after year. They spread to the general public distorted anti-Tesla propaganda as they turn to experts who would like to see Tesla collapse.
Let's take a short detour for a moment to explain this better. Some politicians (I will not even mention his name) have been the target of defamation campaigns for decades. The media has continuously investigated non-scandals or ruminated on potential scandals that others were investigating. Month after month, year after year, they did it. The numerous false scandals were not deserved, as the investigations had determined, but the constant rolling of the drum potential scandal, investigation this, investigation which This led the public to be largely convinced that a certain politician was as crooked as Cruella de Vil. She was not. The journalists realized over time that they did not, but they did not realize they had brainwashed the public until it was too late. Did they learn their lesson? I would say "not at all. "
Another thing that has emerged in the last two years is that Russia has engaged in massive public perception campaigns focused on social media games. False profiles, fake comments, fake tweets, fake news, false citizen concerns, etc., etc. Before the official revelations, a "serious and serious person" might be inclined to say that the idea was crazy. Even nowadays, saying that these tactics are used for other purposes (such as setting up clean tech companies) can lead to "serious and serious people" rolling their eyes.
To think that these tactics were only used to elect Donald Trump, is to ignore the water of a pool while noticing the water on your head.
I had used to cover climate science. I have covered climatology during the COP15 period in Copenhagen. I learned to notice Russian trolls in comments and on social media before learning that it was about Russian trolls. Later CleanTechnicaI've seen the same kind of trolls flocking to some articles on wind power, on solar energy and now on Tesla's articles. They publish all of Tesla's articles and invade Twitter as much as anything I've seen beyond the nonsense of #MAGA and / RealDonaldTrump Subreddit (or so-called so-gigantic subreddit). I'm not saying that these are all Russian the trolls. It could be the armies of trolls hired by Big Oil, Short Sellers or Barney. It is quite difficult to discern the source of trolling.
Elon Musk's tweets and even the articles to which he gives the heart to Twitter are invaded by the trolls. I am 100% sure that some of them are paid for troll. Some of them are certainly robots, not even paid humans. And some of them are real humans who have integrated the story and joined the crowd after falling prey to talking points / messages repeatedly hammered and introduced into the system. (Remember that if millions of people can be led to vote for a career scammer in the United States of America, you can be sure that they can be accused of thinking that Elon Musk is full of shit, no matter the evidence, real world record, who pays attention to evidence when talking points are sunk into the cells of your brain?
Yes, I will say the obvious: a lot reporters participate in troll campaign discussions on social networks and are convinced that they come from a totally honest and democratic source.
Read "The Tesla Smear" to get a better idea of the different actors involved or potentially involved in the smearing of Tesla. If you think that billions of dollars are spent on reducing the actions of Tesla and that the people behind these billions are not engaged in social perception campaigns that distort the opinions of journalists, you sleep driving.
And now we come to the last part – the difficulties and missteps of Tesla that propelled the media attacks on Tesla to 11.
For years, CEO Elon Musk has opposed a horrific, sometimes manipulated coverage in the media (whether Top Gear or the New York Times.) But Elon and Tesla occupied a special place in the eyes of the public and the media. People liked the Tesla and Elon Musk vehicles, and the media somehow told this story in a direct way. In 2016, I wrote an article titled "Why Elon is So Loved" and the follow-up "Why do people hate so much Elon" seemed hardly necessary, as the attacks on Elon had barely begun. The media largely shared Tesla's clear story when he decided to write about the young group Silicon Valley (outsider). When something went wrong, Elon provided comments and corrected their mistakes.
But then, some stories of short sellers and smear campaigns have really begun to impose themselves. The media began to integrate them story after story. Elon and Tesla fell back, but the corrections were not made. The attacks have increased in number and intensity. Elon is angry. After a while, Elon Musk attacked the media – not in its entirety, but close enough so that the blood of all journalists began to bubble.
Frankly, the counter-attacks were horribly timed and did not refer to Trump's extremely undemocratic political atmosphere. We have (and still are) witnesses of unjustified attacks on the media and democracy, perhaps even more than anything the United States has ever seen. One could forgive Elon Musk for being so focused on his own work that he did not obsessively follow the changing political situation in the United States, but the attacked journalists were naturally unable to disclose this forgiveness. (Elon is a very busy guy and he was particularly busy at the factory at the time, so it's one thing to be invited to a few meetings to supposedly give advice on business-related topics. to follow the political news every day and aware of all the absurd attacks of our society against American democracy.)
In addition, let me make it clear that while I said earlier that journalists are too much in demand to be experts on many of the topics they cover, there is one thing on which the media spends a great deal of time and resources, and so understands very well: United States. policy. I'm not saying that they are doing a good job of telling the whole story (see my reviews above), but at least they understand when a demagogic scammer attacks democracy and is able to tell the story. explain.
The attacks on the media generated a great deal of anger, frustration, resentment and revenge on the part of journalists who had previously tried to do their job. No, Elon Musk was not a savior of society in their eyes. Now he was "just like Trump". There are many more nuances and history here, but I will not go into details. The important point is that Elon had become a substitute for Trump in their eyes. Elon had attacked one of the fundamental pillars of democracy (even as he was trying to point out that it needed to be strengthened).
Without a doubt, the results of these widespread attacks against the media are still being felt today. Without a doubt, some journalists covering Tesla hate Elon Musk and hate Tesla because of this episode. Without a doubt, they are much more open to messages from short sellers, the oil industry and conventional car lobbyists after determining that Elon Musk is a real idiot in attacking democracy. and all who question him.
Solving this problem is a task that will take time, special attention, empathy and more than a little patience. I hope that Elon and Tesla will be able to use all this for the good of society.
There is also another problem. Tesla is one of the most fashionable brands in the world, even the most fashionable. It's one of the most dramatic stocks in the stock market. His CEO is one of the most outspoken, honest, fun and public CEOs in the world. People want news from Tesla, and reporters have to deliver the results.
With the pressure of work, deadlines and editorial guidelines, and the resentment of Elon Musk described above, reporters are more than happy to turn to negative stories about Tesla or 39, Elon that are presented. They are more than willing to dig Twitter for anti-Tesla negativity. They are more than willing to subscribe to the conspiracy theories about missing cars in parking lots and then appear on other parking lots in a large project to claim that the company sells cars while it is not. is not the case. (It does not matter the reality and all that.)
The media will fill the gaps in Tesla's news cycle if Tesla does not do it well for them. Frankly, Tesla needs to do a lot more to guide the story, get useful and genuinely informative stories, get the media into the world of Tesla instead of expecting journalists to walk unhindered, and showcase the vast success of 'a 15 California company that today employs over 40,000 people looking for a clean, sustainable and humane future for humankind. C & # 39; the actual storybut it must be communicated to the media in an efficient, fluid and obsessive manner so that they can communicate it again to their readers.
Despite the long period of animus and the constant challenge of communicating the story of Tesla to reporters who are short of time and who are continually fed shuffles of short sellers' discussion topics, I'm not sure of the time. hopefully that they turn a corner.
On the one hand, some of them took note of the stellar commercial successes of September and the third quarter as a whole.
Gabrielle Coppola from Bloomberg judiciously pointed out that BMW feels the pressure of Tesla. Well, even a BMW executive recognized it, but Gabrielle made that comment very well. "Tesla is now increasing volumes and putting pressure on this market segment," said Bernhard Kuhnt, CEO of BMW North America, in an interview Bloomberg. "In this environment, I am very very happy to say that we have made progress." (What's ridiculous is that the chart following this statement includes sales of Mercedes, BMW and Lexus, but does not include sales of Tesla, even though Tesla had just taken first place on the luxury vehicle market.)
Another article by Gabrielle Coppola and Tom Randall noted that the Model 3 was becoming one of the best-selling sedans in the United States. That one included a good graph showing that the Model 3 was the 5th best-selling sedan in the third quarter. The cars above and below the list are much cheaper cars, which means the Model 3 is the most profitable sedan, but I'll give them a pass for missing that note.
CNN also had an article on the model 3 become one of the best-selling cars in the country.
same Internal business reported that Tesla was increasing its production of vehicles. (Update: after writing this article, a CleanTechnica The reader strongly recommended the article titled "Tesla too big to fail – but not for the reason you think", which is a superb piece of the catch.)
In recent days, these outlets and others have heard wind of the news that Tesla has become the top selling luxury automaker in the United States and that model 3 has become the only one. one of the best-selling cars in the country. Maybe they will discover later that Tesla is on a solid financial base and probably has a promising future?
Overall, Tesla's attention to the media is still very negative and lacking in context, but I hope the media takes a different angle on Tesla and are ready to return to optimism.
In addition to the article on Tesla sales, the report on the third quarter results is close. Assuming that Tesla's finances are as good as we think, it will be much harder for short sellers to manipulate the press and convince them that Tesla is about to collapse. If these journalists start to see through the FUD showers, they may see enough light of the day for Tesla to be considered a US success story in the cleantech sector that should be highlighted in a positive way. Perhaps they will stop giving as much ink to authentic fake news about criminal parking, Ponzi schemes and Twitter monitoring. Perhaps they will begin to believe what Elon Musk has been telling them for years. Maybe they'll see the Tesla drivers smile and understand the essence of what is at stake here and why Tesla is in business. and is so successful.
About the author
Zachary Shahan Zach tries to help the society to help herself (and other species). He spends most of his time here CleanTechnica as director and editor. He is also the president of Important media and the director / founder of Obsession EV and Solar love. Zach is recognized worldwide as an expert in electric vehicles, solar energy and energy storage. He has lectured on clean technologies at conferences in India, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States and Canada.
Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG and ABB. After years devoted to sun protection and electric vehicles, he simply has confidence in these companies and has the impression that they are good clean tech companies in which to invest. it does not offer any professional investment advice and should not be held responsible for your loss of money, so do not rush.
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