A Week Of FUD — #Pravduh About #Tesla Report 15
Intro
Only a week to go till Christmas and Tesla failing seems to be on the wish list of certain journalists, but because their paycheck probably comes in part from fossil fuels, a lump of coal is all they will get for their troubles.
Some of the headlines that we saw this week were so outrageous that they have no place in the mainstream media, a tabloid maybe. This is what we mean:
- Apple buys Tesla and a solar flare wipes trillions from the economy: 10 outrageous predictions for 2019 (Callum Burroughs)
- Elon Musk has stopped meetings to watch ‘Monty Python’ clips (Mark Matousek -20% neutrality index score)
- Elon Musk apparently has a heightened sense of smell, which means people can’t wear perfume or cologne in job interviews (Graham Rapier -35% neutrality index score)
- Tesla employees were reportedly told not to walk past Elon Musk’s desk because of his wild firing rampages (Isobel Asher Hamilton -67% neutrality index score)
The first one is just an author’s predictions for 2019, which is again not news, just for fun. The Monthy Python clips are hardly surprising and not really worth headline attention, and the whole thing is apparently out of context. The last two are just total, utter FUD. A lot of it is coming from an enormous WIRED FUD piece that is just so unbelievable that Tesla is actually considering filing charges (according to said article).
Tesla’s statement on this matter is very appropriate and should be kept in mind: “If employees really weren’t able to disagree with Elon, rather than ramping Model 3, Tesla would currently be focused on building cyborg dragons, implementing a company-wide policy banning blue shoes, and playing Monty Python videos on a 24-hour loop in all of the break rooms.”
Also, we wanted to emphasize that each week we are sharing the raw data (headlines and scores). 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. For details on our methodology and broader context about this weekly analysis, see our previous Pravduh About Tesla report.
#Pravduh About #Tesla
Report #15 (December 8–14)
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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 or two pieces about Tesla, here are the 39 who published more than 7 articles about Tesla since we started tracking on September 1st, ranked from least positive to most positive:
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 interesting and potentially useful for considering what kind of stories the authors tend to write.
What Changed With Tesla Last Week
Aside from the summary in the intro, here’s a summary of Tesla news and potential news ordered by day.
You can consider for yourself what were objectively the important updates in the “Tesla story” last week.
- Tesla is training Autopilot to recognize traffic lights, signs, & roundabouts (9 Dec)
- Tesla might unveil its electric pickup truck next year (11 Dec)
- Elon Musk claims 60 minutes interview was edited in a misleading manner (11 Dec)
- Tesla announces cancellation wait list (11 Dec)
- Tesla might ship 3,000 Model 3s per week to Europe starting next year (12 Dec)
- First pictures of European CCS charger have appeared (12 Dec)
- Tesla lowers prices in China (14 Dec)
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 approach each new story with that in mind. This is why we’re doing this work.
Again, here is the data from this past week in case you want to have a closer look at the raw data.
For details on our methodology and broader context about this weekly analysis, see our previous Pravduh About Tesla report.
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