Fox Fails — Bashes Tesla For Years, Then Forgets It Had Government Loans! (i.e. Lies Through Its Teeth)

May 29th, 2013 by Zachary Shahan

This article was originally published on EV Obsession.

FOX NEWS (“news,” I should write) is so lame I’m not sure if it’s sad or funny. It bashed the heck out of Tesla for years due to the fact that the company won a $450 million government loan. It equated it to the tiny percentage of loan-receiving companies that have failed and repeatedly called it a failure (despite Tesla’s numerous groundbreaking successes).

Courtesy of Tesla Motors

Tesla has just paid back its government loan… 9 years early. A failure if you ask me, right? Of course, FOX has to cover the news, since it’s huge news. Tesla is the first American car company to hit mass production in about 50 years. It is a whopping success. And out of government debt 9 years early?!

Unfortunately, FOX can’t even cover the story right. As you see in the video below (second half), FOX “reporters” consistently mess up and say that Tesla didn’t receive any government loans… at least they don’t think so. Wha?? You’ve got to be kidding me. The news is all over the place. Tesla has issued several press releases. FOX bashed Tesla for years simply for having loans. Now they think it only got loans from venture capitalists?

What a joke.

What a sad joke.

Here’s the video (follow the link to Peter Sinclair’s article):

Here’s another FOX segment praising the wonders of the Tesla Model S, which won Consumer Reports’ best rating ever (99/100) as well as numerous other awards, which has been selling like hotcakes (outcompeting BMW, Mercedes, and Audi), and which has seen its stock rising significantly. Notably, again, the reporters don’t mention for a second that Tesla was one of a few recipients of the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program (a loan to help in manufacturing the Tesla Model S).

Here’s the video (again, h/t to Peter Sinclair).

If anyone considers FOX NEWS an actual, objective news site, I pity you. It’s a propaganda machine with an intense (and backwards) political agenda.

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Tags: Fox News, Tesla, Tesla loan, Tesla Model S, Tesla repays loan

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

richardisdorky

I hear that same old song and dance all the time. “Other _______ are bias too, so Fox that isn’t bad.”. Here’s the think. Everyone has some sort of bias. That doesn’t mean a thing. What matters is whether or not that bias is justified by the facts. Given Fox’s history it is not their bias that is the problem. It’s that they are so often wrong or flat out lying.
dr_bugs

The writer obviously has no clue where electricity comes from.
Elonpolishesmynob

TESLA will fail. They have sold all the cars they could for the past year, and in a few months, after meeting their production demands, the plant will sit idle for months just like all the other ECV plants did.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Cash out your investments, if you have any, and sell Tesla short.
Tesla

“Tesla is the first American car company to hit mass production in about 50 years.”
Really? That comment alone shows how ignorant the writer of this article is.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  What company/companies are you thinking about?
Rob

I’m very sad and ashamed to say that rupert murdoch is an australian. The lies and omissions perpertrated by his media companies have become so blatant its ridiculous. Whats even sadder is that some people believe the crap he peddles.
- ed
  
  Your personal opinion is fine. Calling people liers and full of crap is not beneficial to anyone and does not further the cause to improve our countries future needs for energy. Come up with some constructive ideas. I am interested in hearing them
  - A Real Libertarian
    
    Grow up ed.
    
    “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” is how immature people think mature people think.
- dr_bugs
  
  Thank you for proving that you are another low-information moron.
Deni Diesel

Lighten up youngun’
Learn from (all of) history or repeat its lessons. Americans have become myopic in our retrospection and need to reach back a few thousand years at historical human behavior to learn from its consequences. Every choice has a consequence. Too much short term gratification going on in the US.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Andrew-Diamond/688055355 Andrew Diamond

Foxnesia!
https://twitter.com/MatthewLRose Matthew Rose

I always enjoy how they are always certain to reference Bush for starting this government loan program. Oh, wait…
kEiThZ

I cannot understand why any American would hate Tesla.

It’s an American car company that if successful while go a long way towards making America energy-independent.

An American from the 50s and 60s who saw taxpayer funds invested in putting a man on the moon and the construction of the entire interstate system would consider today’s breed of Americans to be anything but American. Who in their right minds would favour avoiding investment in a disruptive company that would help achieve national objectives, just on principle (which is not even applied evenly across government….see the huge number of defence contractors sucking on the government’s teat), and leave America depend on foreign powers? That’s patently un-American.
- ed
  
  I doubt any individual american hates Tesla.
  Going to the moon involved national pride and could only be done with your money. Highways serve all of us and is part of the federal mandate to provide infrastructure.
  Tesla is none of that. It is a private interprise that exists to make money. I agree, thay may have honerable intentions but the bottom line is to make money. They really will when someone like Nissan or Toyota buys them out.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    Are you so poorly informed that you don’t know that many, many US corporations receive assistance from the federal government?
    
    Turn off Fox.
  - kEiThZ
    
    Nissan or Toyota buying them out? That’s laughable. Musk has too many shares to let that happen.
    
    And sure Tesla is a private enterprise. But I can’t believe any American who truly believes in capitalism would hold that against them. Even more incredibly, it seems that some Americans have zero issues standing up for the likes of Chevron (a much larger private enterprise) or Shell and are willing to have government bend over backwards to accomodate them (please let them drill in environmentally sensitive areas), but suddenly raise the private enterprise flag when it comes to Tesla. Talk about inconsistent principles and hypocrisy.
    
    Even beyond that, did anybody complain when private enterprise largely built up the internet? Or when private enterprise builds toll roads? Or when private enterprise built up succesful railroad networks? Why is Tesla any different?
ed

You inability to accept that other people have a different view of things shows your lack of maturity. Many people believe that the Government should not be loaning that kind of our money to very risky enterprises. Especially with almost 17 trillion dollars worth of debt. We believe in spending money on research, not on projects where venture capitalist fill the bill better. I can show you thousands of lies and dasterdly deeds by the other side from the top down but I do not think that is why this blogg exists. Personally, I would have spent the money loaned to Tesla for battery research that I beleive would benefit all of us. Not just the Tesla stock Holders. And I am happy Tesla succeded.
I also suggest that you use your pen time more wisely and not bash anyone and spend your time touting the things that did work or make suggestions on how you think things could get better. One more rant and I will be deleting you from my favorites.
PS Grow up and act like an adult and treat your readers like adults.
- kEiThZ
  
  Tosh. Your rant bears little relation to the topic at hand: Fox News’ flip flopping.
  
  Fox got it wrong and now they are trying desperately to pretend they were Tesla admirers all along. I expect there will be some Republican loud mouths doing the same dance in due course. Unfortunately for them Google is a great store of history.
  
  I agree with your position that government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. But green energy is small fish on this front. How about cutting out oil and gas subsidies or brain dead politicians continually overrulling the Pentagon to fund billions in defence procurements that the services don’t want? What revelas hypocrisy is the way some politiicans pursue green programs with zeal, based on “principle” while justifying literally 10-100 times higher spending on other useless programs.
  
  EVs wouldn’t need subsidies if oil and gas and roads weren’t subsidized. Take out the subsidies on both sides. I’d love to see Detroit compete with Tesla at $7/gallon gasoline. I would bet my next paycheque, Tesla would win without any tax credits.
  - ed
    
    Ranting about Fox News is not the subject of this forum. I do not mind anyone saying Fox got it wrong and is having a problem righting it’s position. Calling Fox a sad Joke and so on and so goes beyond what this forum is about and not the personal opinion and atttack on an entity you do not agree with.
    I hope we never see $7.00 dollar gas. That hurts the poor guy who cannot afford a new , high mileage vehicle but still needs his/her existing vehicle to get to work. The only people who would benefit would be people who own a Tesla like vehicle or own Tesla like stock.
    As far as subsidies, call you congressman and do something about it.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Fox, the Wall Street Journal and all other Murdoch media are more than sad jokes. They harm America when they purposely spread lies.
      
      2011-
      “The release yesterday of yet another survey indicating the more you watch Fox News the less they know, has once again shone a spotlight on one of the unique features that defines Rupert Murdoch’s cable news outlet – it is very, very good at misinforming people. And it’s very bad at reporting the news.
      
      In other words: Propaganda? Yes. News? Not so much.”
      
      http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/11/22/seven-surveys-make-a-trend-for-fox-and-viewers/167217
      
      2012 –
      “A new survey from Farleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind finds that people who watch no news at all can answer more questions about international current events than people who watch cable news outlets like Fox News and MSNBC. The survey also finds that Fox News viewers are the worst-informed on domestic and international current events, while NPR listeners are the best-informed.”
      
      http://www.mediaite.com/online/yet-another-survey-fox-news-viewers-worst-informed-npr-listeners-best-informed/
      
      2013 –
      “A recent study by PublicMind Poll, conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University, found that viewers of Fox News are less informed about world events than people who don’t watch any news at all.”
      
      http://internationalpost.co/fox-news-viewers-less-knowledgeable-than-people-who-watch-no-news-at-all-study/
      
      We have American citizens going to the poll with their heads stuff full of lies. How can we expect to govern ourselves when a portion of our voters are intentionally mislead?
      
      No wonder our Congress is so dysfunctional. A number of our elected officials are sent to Washington by people who have been fed lies. And a number of our elected officials use Fox as their news source.
- J_JamesM
  
  Arguably, investing in job creation is EXACTLY what we should be doing with unemployment so high, wages so flat, the deficit falling faster than at any time since WW2, and interest rates so low, but whatever. Who listens to the Keynesians anymore…?
Valisius

Fox news bashes Tesla because their masters have not squeezed every cent they can out of oil yet, electric cars are the future, oil coal and natural gas simply won’t last forever.
S.Nkm

In the same vein, when a republican is caught soliciting gay sex in public bathrooms or doing something obviously stupid he is labeled as a democrat.
- Ross
  
  Gay sex stories must involve a Republican. They’re no fun otherwise.
noway

And which one isn’t, MSNBC? #partisanbs
- youareme7
  
  Partisan BS, Indeed. Fox “may” have a right leaning slant; but they’re far outnumbered by the left leaning slants of most news sites. Hey Cleantechnica, stick to the tech. Leave the politics to Fox and CNN and their ilk.
  - Ross
    
    This is a clear case of hypocrisy by Fox “News” over government loans to Tesla so it is fair and proper to call them out on it.
    - youareme7
      
      Let not attribute malice when incompetence more than suffices; I’d say that tends to ring true for lots of news pieces.
      - Ross
        
        I’d like it to merely be a case of incompetence because then being ridiculed for it should make them try harder to be “fair and balanced” on the issue.
      - kEiThZ
        
        It’s Fox News. There was malice and incompetence. But more the former than the latter.
        
        How could anybody say there was no malice when you see the reports? Just look at how they went after the Volt as well.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    “far outnumbered by the left leaning slants of most news sites”
    
    That is so incorrect that it’s close to pathological.
    
    Perhaps you confuse presenting facts with political slanting? If Fox is your news source then facts are probably something strange for you to encounter.
    - youareme7
      
      If you fail to see the slant I don’t even need to ask your political leaning. I happen to see both slants and both piss me off; thanks for the personal attack though.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        You’re welcome.
        
        Enjoy.
  - http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
    
    It’s been documented that Fox gets the facts wrong more than any other news agency.
    
    You can’t really separate the policy and politics from the tech. I mean you can, but it’s like taking jelly out of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The proper policies are and have been necessary to get new tech off the ground, same goes for cleantech. And consumers are also needed. With Fox fighting sound policies and spreading misinformation about cleantech, we’re all hurt.
    
    Plus, see J. James’ comment below.
  - J_JamesM
    
    The claim that other media have a leftward slant is highly dependent on where you yourself fall on the political spectrum; a true Leftist thinks all media is right-wing, and vice versa. That statement is only true if your perspective is actually between that of Fox and the other media; which, given their respective distances from the theoretical “middle,” places you firmly in the Right, according to the rules of the Overton Window.
    
    But there’s another thing, and I think it’s more important. Let’s grant you your subjective premise that other media is left-leaning. My rejoinder to that would be: so what? How exactly is that relevant? All that statement does is shift the conversation to something that’s got nothing to do with the matter at hand; namely, Fox News doing yet another of their stupid stunts, which they seldom, if ever, apologize for or redact. So I ask again, does the fact that Fox is “outnumbered by left-leaning media” somehow excuse them from their bad behavior? Does it change the fact that they screwed up royally? Does it change the fact that their original harping on Tesla was done for the expressly partisan and journalistically shameful purpose of bashing Obama to get Romney and Republicans elected?
  - kEiThZ
    
    Only the most partisan hacks would suggest that CNN is leftleaning.
    
    And there is nothing left leaning about cleantechnica unless of course you are a tea partier and think that climate change (not global warming…note the difference) is irrelevant, then of course, clean tech will be useless to you.
    - youareme7
      
      What’s a shame is not being able to envision that someone might not play for TEAM RED or TEAM BLUE. Both are guilty of hypocrisy with good intentions. I like Cleantechnica because of the tech and science, I’m an engineer for a solar and wind EPC. What I disgust is the partisan BS that I originally posted about.
  - Euro
    
    There are no left wing parties or media in the US. You only have moderate rights (democrats, NBC) and over top crazy and evil (where the evil ones use the crazy ones) right (republicans, fox)
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Everything is retaliative.
      
      If you are someone whose beliefs are on the far, far right then all media is left-leaning and there are no conservative parties.
      
      If you are someone whose beliefs are on the far, far left then all media is right-leaning and there are no liberal parties.
      
      Most people live between the extremes….
- J. James
  
  Does twitter link to Disqus?
  
  …Anyway, MSNBC does have primarily liberal programming; however, as politifact has recently published, Republicans lie at a rate 3 times greater than Democrats. So the question becomes, whose slant do you trust more when it comes to matching up as closely as possible with reality?
  
  Just because things are opposites does not make them equal, and Republicans have become demonstrably radicalized over the last decade, with no appreciable movement from the middle by the Democrats in the same time.
  
  Allow me to use a riddle as an analogy: there are two men a ways apart, and each is accusing the other of moving away from the middle at a rather rapid pace. Each is accusing the other of being biased. How do you tell which one is lying and which one is telling the truth?
  
  The answer is to ignore them and look around. One of the men is standing on the edge of a cliff. The other is plummeting off of it. In other words, accusations of bias are useless and idiotic. Only the facts matter.
  - J. James
    
    Sorry ’bout that double post. Disqus is being weird for me.
  - http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
    
    Nice summary. Thanks.
Matt

The government can’t pick winners, only losers. Therefore, by definition, any loan payed back early does not exist. Hey! in fact it never exist; yea that’s the ticket!
arne-nl

Well we can’t have successful DOE loans, can we?