I don’t know if everyone realizes that Electrek is not true journalism, but a Tesla fan site run by people who own Tesla stocks and use the site to win referral prizes like Roadsters. The same is true for Teslarati (obviously), and CleanTechnica. It’s in the financial self-interest of these fan sites to write positive stuff about Tesla, and they probably would do it anyway because they’re Tesla fans. Same goes for all the Tesla podcasts and YouTube channels.
I read Electrek pretty much every day because it provides a useful service. If anything of interest happens related to Tesla or EVs, it will be on Electrek. That is extremely useful. I can check one site and get all the news, even the minutae no one else covers. Due to its prominence in the Tesla community, Electrek also sometimes gets leaks. But Electrek is not journalism. It’s from the perspective of a fan and an investor.
I bring this up because I think folks are looking at Electrek as the model of how journalists should cover Tesla. It’s not. Journalism is the Fourth Estate. Being a journalist is different from being a fan or investor. It requires having no conflict of interest. It requires you to be more circumspect, and critical. It’s a different job than writing for a fan site, or arguing a bull thesis for Tesla.
Granted, there is a lot of frustrating coverage of Tesla. My theory is that Tesla draws an immense amount of attention because it is so beloved, so exciting to so many, and do potentially disruptive to the auto industry. In the tech industry, Elon is one of the most esteemed CEOs and Tesla is one of the most esteemed companies. Tesla has a passionate fan base that stuns outsiders. The technology Tesla is working on is just inherently interesting. All this draws a huge amount of attention, and with that attention comes scrutiny and criticism.
Part of journalism’s job as the Fourth Estate is to scrutinize and criticize. Journalism also arguably has an undue bias toward the negative, with some research finding that media coverage has gotten more negative in the last 50 years. I remember Steven Pinker mentioned a study that found editors were more likely to choose a story if it gave a negative framing, rather than a positive or neutral framing, to the same set of facts.
With attention, also comes haters. Tesla is held up as an example of good capitalism. So anti-capitalists and skeptics of capitalism find fault with Tesla in order to argue it’s just another example of bad capitalism — because all capitalism is bad capitalism. Tesla is not the target of this criticism because it’s the worst example of capitalism, but because many people believe it’s one of the best.
Similarly, some car enthusiasts and auto journalists get annoyed by everyone singing Tesla’s praises and talking about Tesla all the time, so they get grumpy about it. They aren’t enthused about this precocious, arrogant new kid on the block who thinks it knows better than everyone else. The hype is too much. Tesla has indeed stumbled as a new car company even while trash talking the rest of the industry. But it also has genuinely innovated in surprising ways and shaken other companies out of their complacency.
Then there’s just the fact that for every party, there is someone who wants to rain on it. On the benign side, it’s more fun to watch a CinemaSins video than a video about why someone loved a movie. It can be fun to criticize. There are also people who (somewhat annoyingly) just like being contrarian. On the darker side, a lot of people are pessimistic, cynical, angry, exhausted, and depressed. They are negative because that is part of their life experience.
In the investment world, there are two philosophies. One philosophy abhors dependence on outside capital, and thinks it’s a basic requirement of any business to be profitable and self-sustaining. Another philosophy believes in accelerating growth with outside capital. Wall Street seems to lean toward the former, whereas Silicon Valley fully embraces the latter. Tesla’s high valuation and dependence on outside capital has made it controversial in the investing world.
All of these are ways that people react against hype and excitement. It’s backlash. Tesla isn’t being singled out because people, just out of the blue, thinks it’s bad. It’s a response to how much enthusiasm there is about Tesla.
People want to believe that negativity about Tesla is orchestrated from behind a billowy black curtain. It’s the simplest kind of story to tell: bad people are planning a bad thing! Goes back to our evolutionary ancestry. Explaining a problem in terms of an abstract phenomenon is hard and confusing by comparison (and you don’t get the satisfaction of having someone to blame and fight against).
There is a principled argument to be made about Tesla coverage, and broader themes of systemic bias in media coverage around negativity, status quo bias, statistics, balance, empathy, and so on. Then there are people who are mad at journalists and treat them aggressively because they are doing journalism and not running a Tesla fan site. Journalists who are actually doing really good journalism, and have a positive view of Tesla. There are people who want every site to be Electrek, and who are convinced the media must be up to something because that isn’t the case. This is madness. This is going too far.
The media is not the enemy. Bloomberg isn’t evil. Abusing journalists on Twitter is terrible behaviour. There is no secret plot involving every major news outlet in the world. There is no crooked media. There is just journalism, with its own set of problems.
I read Electrek pretty much every day because it provides a useful service. If anything of interest happens related to Tesla or EVs, it will be on Electrek. That is extremely useful. I can check one site and get all the news, even the minutae no one else covers. Due to its prominence in the Tesla community, Electrek also sometimes gets leaks. But Electrek is not journalism. It’s from the perspective of a fan and an investor.
I bring this up because I think folks are looking at Electrek as the model of how journalists should cover Tesla. It’s not. Journalism is the Fourth Estate. Being a journalist is different from being a fan or investor. It requires having no conflict of interest. It requires you to be more circumspect, and critical. It’s a different job than writing for a fan site, or arguing a bull thesis for Tesla.
Granted, there is a lot of frustrating coverage of Tesla. My theory is that Tesla draws an immense amount of attention because it is so beloved, so exciting to so many, and do potentially disruptive to the auto industry. In the tech industry, Elon is one of the most esteemed CEOs and Tesla is one of the most esteemed companies. Tesla has a passionate fan base that stuns outsiders. The technology Tesla is working on is just inherently interesting. All this draws a huge amount of attention, and with that attention comes scrutiny and criticism.
Part of journalism’s job as the Fourth Estate is to scrutinize and criticize. Journalism also arguably has an undue bias toward the negative, with some research finding that media coverage has gotten more negative in the last 50 years. I remember Steven Pinker mentioned a study that found editors were more likely to choose a story if it gave a negative framing, rather than a positive or neutral framing, to the same set of facts.
With attention, also comes haters. Tesla is held up as an example of good capitalism. So anti-capitalists and skeptics of capitalism find fault with Tesla in order to argue it’s just another example of bad capitalism — because all capitalism is bad capitalism. Tesla is not the target of this criticism because it’s the worst example of capitalism, but because many people believe it’s one of the best.
Similarly, some car enthusiasts and auto journalists get annoyed by everyone singing Tesla’s praises and talking about Tesla all the time, so they get grumpy about it. They aren’t enthused about this precocious, arrogant new kid on the block who thinks it knows better than everyone else. The hype is too much. Tesla has indeed stumbled as a new car company even while trash talking the rest of the industry. But it also has genuinely innovated in surprising ways and shaken other companies out of their complacency.
Then there’s just the fact that for every party, there is someone who wants to rain on it. On the benign side, it’s more fun to watch a CinemaSins video than a video about why someone loved a movie. It can be fun to criticize. There are also people who (somewhat annoyingly) just like being contrarian. On the darker side, a lot of people are pessimistic, cynical, angry, exhausted, and depressed. They are negative because that is part of their life experience.
In the investment world, there are two philosophies. One philosophy abhors dependence on outside capital, and thinks it’s a basic requirement of any business to be profitable and self-sustaining. Another philosophy believes in accelerating growth with outside capital. Wall Street seems to lean toward the former, whereas Silicon Valley fully embraces the latter. Tesla’s high valuation and dependence on outside capital has made it controversial in the investing world.
All of these are ways that people react against hype and excitement. It’s backlash. Tesla isn’t being singled out because people, just out of the blue, thinks it’s bad. It’s a response to how much enthusiasm there is about Tesla.
People want to believe that negativity about Tesla is orchestrated from behind a billowy black curtain. It’s the simplest kind of story to tell: bad people are planning a bad thing! Goes back to our evolutionary ancestry. Explaining a problem in terms of an abstract phenomenon is hard and confusing by comparison (and you don’t get the satisfaction of having someone to blame and fight against).
There is a principled argument to be made about Tesla coverage, and broader themes of systemic bias in media coverage around negativity, status quo bias, statistics, balance, empathy, and so on. Then there are people who are mad at journalists and treat them aggressively because they are doing journalism and not running a Tesla fan site. Journalists who are actually doing really good journalism, and have a positive view of Tesla. There are people who want every site to be Electrek, and who are convinced the media must be up to something because that isn’t the case. This is madness. This is going too far.
The media is not the enemy. Bloomberg isn’t evil. Abusing journalists on Twitter is terrible behaviour. There is no secret plot involving every major news outlet in the world. There is no crooked media. There is just journalism, with its own set of problems.
