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Comment by rossjudson | Hacker News Reader

"Low-grade ethics violation" is an apt description of what occurred, in my opinion.

Musk hasn't painted Broder as evil. Publicity-seeking and/or incompetence aren't evil. It's just amplified by the backdrop of electric cars.

If Musk hadn't called bullshit when he saw it, it would have been open season on Tesla by every copycat hack trying to get a piece of the action.

You can be sure that journalists covering Tesla for publications of record will be quite careful and accurate with their facts, good and bad, from now on.

I don't think Musk can ask for more than that.

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"Low-grade ethics violation" is appropriate only if you think the journalist's mandate was to brown-nose.

"Musk hasn't painted Broder as evil."

Musk wrote (source: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive):

     In Mr. Broder’s case, he simply did not accurately capture what happened and worked very hard to force our car to stop running.

I'm sorry, but that's absolutely painting Broder as Evil. I'm going to repeat the claim, because for some reason you don't see this as nefarious: worked very hard to force our car to stop running.

"If Musk hadn't called bullshit when he saw it, it would have been open season on Tesla by every copycat hack trying to get a piece of the action."

Instead, it was open season to attack NYT.

"You can be sure that journalists covering Tesla for publications of record will be quite careful and accurate with their facts, good and bad, from now on.

I don't think Musk can ask for more than that."

What Musk is asking for is the media to be his lapdog. And that's fine. But don't delude yourself into thinking he's asking for objectivity. You are belying your own inability to think.

Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.

With a bar for "evil" so absurdly low, it strikes me as rather silly to become so indignant over such labels.

Yeah, so by that standard you are evil.

Here's how you call someone evil:

"You are evil."

There! Massive simplification! We don't need to read between the lines and feed our paranoia.

No. The media is simply not going to bother to review the car.

And Musk can't ask for more than that.

That's a great theory, except they've continued to review it.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-reviews/road-tests/road-test...

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/15/autos/tesla-model-s-lessons/

http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-tes...

To think that the media would boycott talking about this car would require a pretty deep misunderstanding of the incentives at play and the structure of the media.

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