Tesla Exposes The Soft Journalistic Underbelly
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2013-02-18 13:56
by Karl Denninger
in Editorial
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Tesla Exposes The Soft Journalistic Underbelly
 

It's not often that you get to catch a newspaper such as the New York Times in intentional falsehoods.

Oh, we know the "media" often stretches the truth, right?  They bury stories they should cover, and trumpet those that suit their agenda.  We all expect this behavior, having experienced it all through our lives.  After all everyone has a bias, even your dear author here -- and I freely admit to that.

But there comes a time when you catch a media outlet lying outright about what happened -- that is, manufacturing alleged "news."  This is happening on an increasing basis, and is one of the reasons is that people are becoming less and less willing to trust "reporters" to report rather than invent.

Such an incident appears to have happened recently with an alleged "test" of the Tesla Model S.

Unfortunately for the New York Times the car in question has a very detailed data recorder inside it.  Tesla maintains those for a couple of reasons, with the largest being the fact that they want to monitor for warranty purposes and be able to detect issues that might require correction.

But in this case what they seem to have detected were a gross number of outright falsehoods, including what appears to be intentional acts that were undertaken to try to get the vehicle to "fail" during the test.

The most-egregious of these appears to document disconnecting the charger when the range display showed available energy to travel only one half of the distance of the reporter's final leg.  That's almost exactly like putting a gallon of gasoline into a car that has placarded "30 mpg" on the window and then trying to drive 60 miles, being surprised when you run out.  Indeed, instead of traveling the projected 32 miles the car actually made it 51 miles on the energy available.

I'm no fan of electric vehicles.  They suffer from realities of physics, specifically energy density limitations and simply move the production of energy from where you see it (out the tailpipe) to where you don't (out the smokestack, nuclear cooling tower, etc.)

But whether my bias is identical to the writer's doesn't matter.

What matters is that The New York Times appears to have engaged in publishing a flatly false and invented story and despite being challenged almost-immediately by Tesla has refused to back down.

The problem isn't that the paper slammed an electric car manufacturer unfairly.  It is that this sort of conduct must now be presumed for each and every article that The New York Times publishes, as they have been caught and rather than immediately firing the reporter in question, apologizing and correcting the record in a loud, plain voice, making clear that this was both an unauthorized and despicable act they are instead saying nothing.

Mr. Musk has done much more than defend his brand, as some may assume.  He has exposed what all of us have suspected and many have had anecdotal evidence of for quite some time, laying it bare upon the table with facts that are very difficult to refute:

Everything the media does and "reports" must be presumed to be dishonest until proved otherwise.

Now shall we discuss Benghazi, Newtown and other alleged "reporting"?

That's what I thought.

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Djloche
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today the editor of the times published a 'final' response in an attempt to sweep it under the rug and appease both parties - unfortunately, the editor continues to stand by the writer and his lies.

meanwhile, a group of Telsa Model S owners decided to take up the challenge and do the same exact drive - an unsolicited trip to prove the NYT writer was full of garbage:

this is the account of one of the owners:
http://fearlessbit.com/2013/02/18/taking....

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Randy123
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Who can afford a Tesla anyway?

The NYtimes is just a self important rag.

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Genesis
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The point isn't that they trashed Tesla.

It's that everything they publish now has to be assumed to be a lie.

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Considering it's the NY Times, I thought that was a given.

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Randy123
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This is one auto reporter Karl. And he lied. And that other guy who made up **** was found out eventually(Jason something)...the paper is a liberal biased mess. But I can't assume that everything they write is a lie.

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Swampwoman
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Heh. Well, I pretty much assumed everything they published was a lie BEFORE Tesla.

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When you lie because you were pressured into it, then it's easier to lie to serve yourself. Soon it is easy to lie just out of habit, and then you finally get to the point you lie out of contempt for your audience, and to affirm to yourself you are superior and they deserve to be lied to since they are too stupid to see it.
Cetera
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Genesis wrote..

The point isn't that they trashed Tesla.

It's that everything they publish now has to be assumed to be a lie.


I've been operating under that assumption since 1995-ish. Possibly earlier. Regardless, close to 20 years. For me, the only usefulness the Times has had in my adult life has been to quote it to disprove some lefty idiot on the rare occassions that even the Times publishes something that disproves their idiocy, and they always respect the Times.

The Paper of Record hasn't been for nearly 20 years now, and they've tainted their rep from much before that. All those pro-Nazi portions of the Times from back in the '30s have to really be suspect as an indication that even then they were on the wrong side. Sure, people can be hoodwinked from time to time, but a 80+ year record of being on the side of the lie, the untruth, and the evil has to count somewhere, doesn't it?

When was America last truly whole, with quality and truthful institutions? Did we peak as a society in the late 18th century?

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Don't forget these are the guys who collaborated with Joe Stalin to hide the Ukrainian Famine/Holodomor in the '30s.
Tdray
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Paging Jayson Blair.
It's beyond me how anybody can take the NYT seriously. I think the Enquirer has as much cred as those jokers.
Steph4liberty
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Quote:
I think the Enquirer has as much cred as those jokers.

Maybe more...

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Quote:
But I can't assume that everything they write is a lie


I don't take his statements as literally every word they write is a lie, that would be impossible. BUT, if they can lie about ONE thing, they can lie about EVERYTHING; therefore, you must assume EVERYTHING they write is a lie.
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Is the NY Times a liberal rag or a fascist rag? Could they be trying to eliminate competition to the Chevy Volt? Or could they be trying to scare people away from electric cars in general, undermining them in favor of Wall Streets gasoline strangle? The government has a lot of GM stock to unload and they want to brag about making a profit. If I could only use the governments accounting structure, I would have every dime I ever spent back in my pocket.

Remember Obama's SOTU address? Everything he brought up wasn't going to cost the goverment a dime. No, but it was going to cost the rest of us out our ass. There are liars and damn liars.

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you would not call me a lover of electric cars. but the data that tesla put out is pretty damming.

its here

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/most-pec....

see for yourself.

oh and **** the NYT

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So the NY times (The newspaper of record) actually did a little sabotage besides the lies. (FRAUD)

Who's surprised?

Que crickets here.

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I used to read stories from the NYT assuming them to be lies, which is a different perspective than having the stories be "wrong." More often than not, they were lies, unproven until later.

These days, I can only look at individual words on their pages as being true, utterly disregarding all context, but any assemblage of words on their pages as being 'lies.'

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I'm still wondering, from the Dorner case, who equated "1 M.O.A." with "Imagine a More Open America".
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If this is a shocker to anyone, they haven't been paying attention.

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Anyone remember when Dateline NBC producers rigged the truck fuel tank with explosives?

We should always question the news.

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Adrenaline_junky
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I already knew (from firsthand experience) that reporters will always go for the "zinger" instead of trying to simply report. I made the mistake of inviting a reporter friend out to a boat party so he could report on the Chicago boating scene.

In the printed piece he quotes an off-duty officer friend of mine who happened to be on board as saying there are probably drugs on some of the boats, thereby implying that cops know there are drugs on the water and actively ignore it. This, even though (1) the officer was off-duty (2) the officer did not work with the marine unit (3) the officer was just making an offhand comment without any evidence whatsoever, and was speaking with all the authority of any random person making small talk. There was absolutely zero reason to throw the quote into the article except to try to sensationalize the piece and tantalize the audience.

In the same article the reporter even quotes his current girlfriend, who was out with us for the first time ever and knew less about the boating scene than himself (he'd been out with us a couple times before), just so he could get her name in print.

It really*****ed me off, but it also showed me what I should have already known: reporters will take the zinger over real news *every time*.

I think something similar is largely what happened here. I'm not as convinced as you that the writer of this Tesla article intentionally lied, but I am completely convinced that he intentionally pushed the envelope of what the car is capable of knowing that it would be a more entertaining story if the car had trouble. Also, I think he exaggerated details based on his vague memory and sparse notes in such a way as to make the story even more sensational (particularly his claim that he slowed to about 45mph to conserve battery, when in fact logs show he only slowed to between 50-55mph).

I thought this article by the Atlantic was pretty good summary of the back and forth arguments:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technolog....

I'd like to see a link to the accusation about the range display on the final leg, though, to see if it conflicts at all with "Argument 5" from the Atlantic's article.

Overall I totally agree that mainstream media reporting in general is crap, and this story just confirms what I already knew.

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NYT Response: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/....

Quote:
Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Motors, has now responded in detail to the account of my test drive of his Model S electric car, using the company’s new East Coast Superchargers, that was published in The Times on Feb. 10. His broadest charge is that I consciously set out to sabotage the test. That is not so. I was delighted to receive the assignment to try out the company’s new East Coast Supercharger network and as I previously noted in no way anticipated – or deliberately caused – the troubles I encountered....

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Perhaps the writer is just a dumb ass, but I somehow doubt it.

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Obseedian
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I dunno...it doesn't seem very clear to me. It looks as though there is an issue in very cold temperatures (which is expected).

Edit: also, it is curious that one of the pieces of data missing from the logs is battery temperature.

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Ls2gto
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Yes NYT, like most newsrags, mutilates the truth. Nothing new here.

Second point is that I am not going to park hundreds of pounds of lithium ion batteries anywhere near my house. I'll stick with dirty and dangerous gasoline, at least it leaves a puddle or an odor before it goes boom!
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