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This fellow is editor in chief of an automotive blog, which offers advertising and sponsorships, "gives marketers access to xxx car buyers and shoppers.." etc. Their review board lists 45 makes including some minor ones. Tesla is notably absent. There is a missing FAQ question for "why haven't you reviewed ___".

My take is that automakers are squirming with angst and demand their media outlets agree.

No reason to send them traffic for bad behavior.

Incisive post, thanks. More nails for the coffin.

You might be right, but I doubt there is any explicit demand. I suspect he is just immersed in car culture and genuinely has internalized the anti-electric sentiment. Negativity is a common tactic in punditry, and I'm sure he profits handsomely just from the controversy. I don't think any conspiracy is necessary for this kind of thing to happen.

I say this not to defend automakers, but to keep focus on realistic root causes.

I don't think conspiracy is the right phrase... more like the media understands their advertiser's needs.

Negativity is one thing, which would be shown if they reviewed it and wrote a bunch of gripes.

But a comprehensive car blog omitting a Motor Trend car of the year from its reviews is a glaring omission that speaks for itself. That's not a little slant, that's draping an elephant in the room.

Huh? Enthusiast car blogs routinely ignore Motor Trend's car of the year picks. It's rare to see any crossover between MT and what enthusiasts actually drive, though it does happen (contrast with the Car and Driver 10Best list, which is much more representative).

They're talking about The Truth About Cars, which is actually a very good autoblog (and much better in his forced absence - 2011), but Ed definitely has an anti-tesla agenda and so does much of the site.

The site's authorship and commentariat are dominated by car dealers and financing people.

(source: TTAC reader for 6 years or so now)

Thank you for posting. Reminds me of the NYT article that bashed Amazon and Bezos a while back. Didn't take much digging to conclude the author/organization has a preconceived bias against the subject.

>Didn't take much digging to conclude the author/organization has a preconceived bias against the subject.

Doesn't every journalist when reporting on any newsworthy item? Everybody has their biases, and they'll naturally come out in reporting. There is no "fair and balanced", it's just a matter of what extent these biases are hidden in the work.

I think the onus is on us, the consumers of this media, to take every piece as only part of the whole truth, and make up our own minds about the subject.

You are surely correct, however, I think there is a difference between a reporter recognizing their own biases (to the extent they are able) and striving to write objective, fair pieces that are properly sourced, fact checked, and give both sides a fair hearing.

It is impossible to completely escape one's own unconscious biases but this particular example is a blog post written by someone in an obvious attempt to put forward a personal (or business) agenda.

If you are a reporter who has identified a bad company, how are you supposed to investigate them publicly without writing articles about how 'bad' they are?

Writing a string or articles about the same topic, shouldn't instantly mean you get extra scrutiny. That scrutiny should be on everyone, since sometimes the most biased are those who care the least to write and have done the least groundwork.

The bias is an opportunity for robojournalism ..

Garbage in, garbage out.

Robojournalism might be even more ripe for bias, but from its sources rather than the journalist itself. Theoretically part of a journalist's job is to get valuable sources from each side of an argument/story and present them equally. The journalist's footprint should be minimal. As we all know, that is increasingly less the case.

To me, this is simply one of the risks that companies who trade entirely on sentiment have to deal with.

I hope it's obvious to anyone that Tesla's (and to a lesser extent, Amazon's) massive valuation is not based on bedrock fundamentals but on perception and expectations. Baseless hit pieces that knock a few percentage points off your stock are part of the game at that point.

It seems to me that sometimes it's not even about what the company is or does (like being a car company or supplier/whatever Amazon calls itself now) but just purely motivated by the market prices. Like the motivation is to affect the stock price, everything else is just tangential.

>Reminds me of the NYT article that bashed Amazon and Bezos a while back.

This case seems a bit different. In the Amazon case there were lots of employees that agreed with the article hinting that it had a lot of truth to it.

I'd like to point out that Amazon, as an employer, had a negative reputation in tech circles well before the NYT article. Read between the lines of Steve Yegge's accidentally published rant from 2011 about platforms and focus on how he describes Amazon.

http://lazytechguys.com/featured/google-engineer-steve-yegge...

I'm shocked that this man's blog has received the attention it did in the first place. It's a bit of an accidental straw man for any real Tesla-related concerns that should come up.

I think Tesla has enough controversy disrupting one of the most deeply entrenched industries on the planet. They don't really need to drum up anymore.

That's not what "straw man" means.

You're probably thinking of the term "false flag".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

In an attempt to appear balanced, the press sometimes presents an opposing viewpoint, no matter what their whacko factor or agenda. In this case, it's kind of like giving a flat earther airtime to respond to a Mars rover landing.

Sounds like he's short

(for anyone downvoting because they think this comment is claiming the man is vertically challenged, it is referring to him being in a financial position that will gain value on the decline of the Tesla stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance) )

thanks, lol

Honestly, I upvoted because my first thought was picturing him as some angry vertically-challenged fellow with a comb-over who is just spiteful because he's vertically challenged. lol

Well it works, because I'm 6' and long on TSLA!

The antonym is long. E.g.: I am long on GOOG, short on AAPL, etc.

Speaking of that. The Tesla stock has dropped from 240 two days ago to 218 now. A 10% swing would make some put options lots of dough.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=TSLA+Interactive#{%22rang...

Remind me again why I ignore traditional media, or at least consider it no better than "some guy's blog"?

The difference is, traditional media normally holds itself to a higher standard and is tasked with filtering out or at the least refining the typical "some guy's blog" content. But "some guy's blog" will always be just that.

Wow. A Tesla owner's complaints on the unofficial Tesla forums were reposted by an apparently-unrelated blogger who complains about Tesla a lot. Clearly this proves that the blogger "fabricated this issue" and was the one who "caused negative and incorrect news to be written about Tesla by reputable institutions" by doing so. I mean, it's not like this argument could be used to discredit any issues customers have with Tesla no matter how genuine - that'd require this anti-Tesla blogger who supposedly latches onto any perceived failure to write about them, after all.

You didn't read the blog post

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