If you were to search for a typical article about Tesla in the media outlet RT (formerly called Russia Today, and Russia’s most prominent international information/propaganda outlet), it is likely that you would come away with the impression that Tesla is a company led by an incompetent CEO producing pathetic, highly dangerous, and unpopular cars.
Among people closely following Tesla, it seems that the biggest topic of the past week has been biased and misleading coverage of Tesla, and electric vehicles or cleantech more generally, from major media outlets.
Walking into Tesla’s large, open, light office space at its Fremont factory, it only took a moment before something hit me. The atmosphere is enormously different from the image of Tesla that you find in much of the media.
We always say the media is treating the world’s only electric car mass manufacturer unfairly. This week, we have some unique opportunities to see this in action.
Last week was earnings weeks for Tesla. We are going to change up the report a bit this week and discuss the top 5 FUD headlines before going into the regular #Pravduh about #Tesla report. My “kudos” to CNBC for covering Tesla in every which way possible, some of which I didn’t know existed or wanted to exist. I’ll start with two CNBC pieces.
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.
This past week was one of the most positive and least negative we have had so far with regards to Tesla headlines in the mainstream media, but it doesn’t actually break any records. There were a few unusual things about the news coverage this week. For example, Bloomberg was extremely positive. That said, a lot of news can’t be categorized easily in a topic group of recurring headlines, and more so when not related to Tesla stock. Two good examples this week:
This week, we have a very special report for a variety of reasons. Ever since we started our Pravduh initiative, people have suggested other news sources. So, we decided to add multiple new news sources in 2019, also going all the way back to September 1st (collecting and rating all articles from these sources) in order to maintain the ability for month-to-month and year-to-year comparisons. The news sources being added are: CBS, NBC, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Post, and Huffington Post.
This last full week of 2018 was a lot more positive than the previous week when it comes to Tesla coverage in major media outlets. In fact, percentage-wise, it’s the most positive week since we started tracking in September. Two new board members greatly contributed to this, as did the cumulative effect of the Model 3’s amazing success story.
This past week, the stock market kept panicking, everyone was looking at what is going on in the White House, and the most positive major thing that happened was Elon Musk unveiling the first Boring Company tunnel. At the same time, there was a lot of negative news regarding Tesla: 10 stories related to the stock market, 10 about a few people departing Tesla, 6 about the spontaneous combustion of a Tesla Model S (whose battery was apparently shot — like, with a gun), and the rest on various other topics.
