Mainstream news organizations mounted attacks against Tesla on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to damage Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who also heads several other large companies.
The primary attack centered around a so-called “recall” that Tesla had to issue to nearly every vehicle that it has sold in the U.S. since 2012, more than two million overall. The move comes after U.S. regulators have looked into the company’s Autopilot system and its role in some accidents that have happened across the U.S. over the last several years.
A report from The New York Times was emblematic of the way that the media covered the story as the newspaper claimed that Tesla’s “reputation for making technologically advanced cars suffered a blow” as a result of the recall.
It wasn’t until deep in the Times’ report that the newspaper informed readers that the “recall” was not really a recall in the traditional sense, i.e. customers have to schedule a time to bring their vehicle to a Tesla facility to be serviced.
Instead, the world’s leading electric car manufacturer is automatically sending out wireless updates to all of its cars through cellular networks that will include updates that will hopefully satisfy regulators, including new warnings and checks to ensure that drivers are paying attention on the road.
Tesla cites data that it says show its Autopilot system, while it may have been involved in some accidents, actually makes its vehicles safer and says that it is “morally indefensible not to make these systems available to a wider set of consumers, given the incontrovertible data that shows it is saving lives and preventing injury.”
“In the 4th quarter of 2022, we recorded one crash for every 4.85 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology,” Tesla said in a statement. “For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology, we recorded one crash for every 1.40 million miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA and FHWA (from 2021) shows that in the United States there was an automobile crash approximately every 652,000 miles.”
The media’s attacks against Musk and his companies have increased sharply ever since Twitter, which now goes by X, accepted Musk’s buyout offer in April 2022. This is in large part due to the fact that many of the narratives that end up driving the news, and thus policy, take shape on the platform. With Musk now in control of the platform, the targeting of mostly conservative accounts on the platform has stopped.
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Another example of the media distorting facts to attack Tesla can be found in an NBC News report that was also published on Wednesday.
The report said that Tesla’s new cybertruck will be “deadlier” than other vehicles because it’s a “6,800-pound electric behemoth with sports-car acceleration that experts say will be lethal to pedestrians and occupants of lighter vehicles.”
The far-left news organization cited “experts” to back up the narrative the report was promoting, but key information was excluded from the report, mainly that the Cybertruck is perhaps the lightest weight electric truck to be produced.
Car and Driver lists the current top electric trucks — all of which are fast — that are being delivered to customers as the Rivian R1T, 7,173 pounds; Ford F-150 Lightning, 6,855 pounds; Chevrolet Silverado EV, 8,500 pounds; and the GMC Hummer EV Pickup, 9,640 pounds.
None of that information was included in NBC News’ report.