Will The Mainstream Media Hold Positive Tesla News Hostage? — #Pravduh About #Tesla Report 21

Intro

The next month may be one of the most important for #Pravduh about #Tesla, because the people — including shareholders and potential investors on the sidelines — are being misled.

So far, January is turning out to be the most negative news month since September. One of the biggest clouds on the horizon, the convertible debt bond worth $920 million, is due to be payed in March. Tesla could get a 50% discount on this ($460 million), but only if it meets a certain criterium — a stock price of around $360. This all depends on a well informed public.

How about we put that $460 million into some perspective? $450 million dollars is how much Tesla spent on Gigafactory 1 construction in the first 7 quarters of its development. Imagine two years of initial Gigafactory 3 costs completely gone. Instead, we have short sellers masquerading as analysts and dropping the hot potato that is Tesla.

Remember when creditor Moody’s downgraded Tesla just days before an earnings report disproving their theory was published? Well, guess what — history is repeating itself. This time, the RBC downgraded Tesla shortly before an earnings report instead of holding their horses a few more days to see whether their theories pan out. (We know, that’s how analysts roll.)

The media, meanwhile, might again choose to hold positive Tesla news hostage while amplifying anything negative they can get their hands on. If this happens in the coming week, don’t be surprised.

As a meta note, something interesting happened last week. Fox News had an article containing a tweet with the #Pravduh hashtag: “Elon Musk’s mom says Tesla shares manipulated by media, short sellers” was the title. The one thing the article didn’t discuss at all, though, was #Pravduh, #FUD, #CleanEnergyWillWin, or any of the other tags Maye Musk uses, nor the source of her information about media misinformation (which is, of course, these #Pravduh About #Tesla reports). They also just happened to pick two tweets that don’t mention CleanTechnica. Now, either the author did not do her research at all or she purposely decided to avoid mentioning the source. (Perhaps Fox News doesn’t want its readers checking out these reports.)

In any case, @MayeMusk, thanks again for your help — it seems we are succeeding at spreading the Pravduh! You’re awesome! #CleanEnergyWillWin

A final topic before we move on to the report: it’s always wise to dig deeper into stories. An eagle-eyed reader of ours, Patrick Riley, did just that. Forbes last week published this article: “Tesla Might Solve Its Cash Woes With Franchise Dealers,” written by Jeremy Alicandri. On closer inspection, this “journalist” has an extensive history working for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA). The other strange thing is that there were multiple unusual, out-of-the-blue articles like that last week. Here’s another example: “Tesla Should Pull an Apple: Leave ‘Production Hell’ to Other People” (Wall Street Journal). Feel free to take a moment for a facepalm here before continuing on to the report.

Remember that each week we share 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 #21 (January 19–25)

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, here are the 34 authors who published more than 12 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 also interesting and potentially useful for considering what kind of stories the authors tend to write.

Under-Reported Tesla News Last Week

Adding onto 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 started European Model 3 test drives (23 Jan)
• Tesla Model 3 won (another) resale value competition (24 Jan)

Some Sneaky Headlines Last Week

• Behind Elon Musk’s Hiring and Firing Spree (Bloomberg)
• Ford CEO Joins Tesla’s Musk in Appealing to Employees for Profit (Bloomberg)
• Tesla has shrunk its Model S and X production hours in order to focus on the Model 3 (TSLA) (Business Insider)
• Visionary Elon Musk is forced to focus on the mundane to keep his Tesla dream alive (LA Times)

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.

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.