Tesla Is Getting The Silent Treatment — #Pravduh About #Tesla Report 12

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Intro

What is going on with Tesla? We have seen weeks with 283 articles of which there were only 29 positive headlines. This week, we have a total of 28 articles. As we said last week, this is probably a good thing — no distractions for Elon or other Tesla staff.

One reason Tesla hasn’t gotten much attention this past week is surely the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, but even that doesn’t explain the extremely low output.

It has been suggested that all of the skeptics, shorts, and critics are currently focusing their attention on Goldman Sachs and that this is the reason Tesla was not discussed as much last week. This would seem to show that most of the negativity really did come from Wall Street, not the competition.

Interestingly, there is one negative headline in there that would have been blown out of proportions and been all over the news if it had come out a month ago. This headline was published once, and no one else mentioned it. I don’t want to give the critics any gasoline, so I won’t mention it here. If you are interested, take a look at our raw data, I am quite sure you will find it.

Here’s the raw data (headlines and scores) used for this report. You can scan through yourself if you want to double check our findings or just see the headlines. And you can check out our own Tesla stories for more context and comparison.


#Pravduh About #Tesla
Report #12 (November 17–23)

 

 

With this being one of the quietest Tesla news weeks so far, there is no “Other” chart this time.

 

The next matter on our itinerary is tracking the authors who covered this news. While the whole list is too long to put here since there are many authors who have written just one piece about Tesla, below are the 29 writers who published more than 8 articles about Tesla since we started tracking Tesla coverage on September 1st. They are ranked from least positive to most positive:

The neutrality index goes from -100% to positive 100%. In this system, 0% is neutral. The number of negative/positive articles and percentages are also still displayed. This system provides a good breakdown of how authors are positioned.

For this entire section, note: At major media outlets, there are often headline writers who control this part of articles, but we find tracking the authors is also interesting and potentially useful for considering what kind of stories the authors tend to write.

Again, here’s the data from this past week in case you want to have a closer look at the actual headlines and scores.

What Changed With Tesla Last Week?

Aside from the summary in the intro, here’s a summary of Tesla news and potential Tesla news ordered by day. You can consider for yourself what were objectively the important updates in the “Tesla story” last week.

Some Sneaky Headlines Last Week

  • What It’s Like Inside Tesla’s Forgotten Gigafactory 2 (Bloomberg)
  • Elon Musk’s Tesla Model 3 Takes Europe Tour — But Not in Britain (Bloomberg)
  • Tesla just had the worst year in its history, but now it’s starting to look like the best tech company in the world (Business Insider)
  • Elon Musk says Tesla has ‘bought some trucking companies’ — but leaders in the car-hauling industry say they haven’t heard squat (Business Insider)

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Our Methodology

As you have seen, we track Tesla headlines and rate them based on their implications for Tesla. We cover 22 major media sites. We rate all of their Tesla headlines as either positive, negative, or neutral. Unlike a more nuanced scale, this system is based on solidly objective evaluation and contains minimal bias. A handful of us have been checking the headlines and we do not find much variation in how a headline is rated, because it is a straightforward and clear system. If there is variation in how a headline is rated, we discuss and come to an agreed conclusion.

In order to be as transparent as possible, all the data our analysis is based on are published at the end of each report. We report the facts and let you draw your own conclusions about the story behind these stories.

We encourage you to check our data and have fun experimenting in the evaluator role — that can be even more illuminating than simply looking at the results. We also encourage you to let us know if you notice something that was rated incorrectly or have suggestions on how to further improve our system.


#Pravduh History & Extra Context

The CleanTechnica team started creating weekly and monthly #Pravduh About #Tesla reports in September 2018 after getting really tired of oddly negative Tesla coverage in mainstream media outlets, and after a little stimulation from some reverse-trolling by Elon Musk.

For those who somehow missed it, in May, Elon Musk got fed up with so much of the media publishing FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) articles about Tesla, and in some cases outright misinformation, that he presented an idea.

Most people who follow Tesla closely agree that it has been the target of far too much misleading, unfair, negative media coverage. We here at CleanTechnica define journalism as: the pursuit of facts and reporting on them in a useful, proper context. When you systematically report with a slant that doesn’t line up with reality, or omit facts that are inconvenient to your point of view, that distorts the general truth of the story.

We at CleanTechnica felt something did need to be done. As the stories — whether in the New York Times, New York Post, Forbes, Business Insider, CNBC, or Bloomberg — got worse, we were finally pushed to more systematic, regular action. Writers on our site had long been informing readers about Tesla FUD and misinformation, and readers had been informing writers. We wrote articles digging into the facts and the finances. But sporadic, one-off attempts at correcting the record didn’t seem to be enough. Putting our own playful spin on the “Pravda” name Elon mentioned on Twitter, we decided to create #Pravduh About #Tesla.

Of all the parts of a story, the headlines have the biggest influence — by far — so we decided to focus our efforts on headline analysis. We have found the results to be very interesting so far, and we’re super curious to see how they evolve over time. Apparently, Elon is interested in this as well.

We would also like to give special thanks Maye Musk for her support of this project and for using the data to try to improve Tesla coverage. Clearly, the biased coverage irritated her as well and she has used our work to bring more attention to specific instances of misleading coverage.

We would also like to thank Zac & Jesse from the YouTube channel “Now You Know” for spreading the word about our reports and Tesla FUD.

The more these #Pravduh About #Tesla reports get shared online through social media, the more people will take notice. If there is an ongoing heavily negative slant about Tesla in certain outlets — even as Tesla has so much positive news to share — people should be aware of this and should approach each new story with that in mind. Help us spread the research around.


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Chanan Bos

Chanan grew up in a multicultural, multi-lingual environment that often gives him a unique perspective on a variety of topics. He is always in thought about big picture topics like AI, quantum physics, philosophy, Universal Basic Income, climate change, sci-fi concepts like the singularity, misinformation, and the list goes on. Currently, he is studying creative media & technology but already has diplomas in environmental sciences as well as business & management. His goal is to discourage linear thinking, bias, and confirmation bias whilst encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and helping people understand exponential progress. Chanan is very worried about his future and the future of humanity. That is why he has a tremendous admiration for Elon Musk and his companies, foremost because of their missions, philosophy, and intent to help humanity and its future.

Chanan Bos has 118 posts and counting. See all posts by Chanan Bos