The media might not be intentionally manipulating the stock so much as publishing information which short sellers find, package, and hand over for free. The incentive is there to create a misleading information campaign even without assuming the media is being very deliberate or coordinating.

Edit: I have no idea why I'm being so downvoted here. All I am saying is that short sellers have incentive to hand the media whatever they can to help their case (not so controversial, right?) and that the media might be taking it for free rather than, as the parent poster says, coordinating to specifically harm Tesla (is this the controversial bit?)