Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective

[HaulingAss]

The press hates no one. They love clicks.

Why does the media like clicks? It's not simply because they like clicks. It's because the number of eyeballs is what determines how much revenue they can get for each ad. It's all about revenue because that's what pays the salaries of journalists and their editors.

Where does this revenue come from? From advertisers, without them the media wouldn't exist and Tesla is not one of the companies that provide that revenue. If Tesla continues to take market share from stalwart advertisers like GM, Ford, Toyota, etc, then advertising revenues will shrink because these companies base their advertising budgets on their sales volumes. Less sales = less advertising spends.

In other words, it's in the media's best interest for Tesla to fail. Because they know Tesla will never spend on advertising like their long-standing customers do. More importantly, media companies hope that Tesla does not demonstrate to Tesla's competitors that advertising is not a necessary cost of doing business. Their biggest fear is that their biggest advertisers might continue to cut their advertising budgets. On the other hand, if they can cause Tesla to stop growing sales, that would demonstrate that all those billions of dollars that Tesla's competitors spend on advertising is neccessary and worthwhile.

If Tesla continues to steal marketshare without spending billions on advertising, the entire business model of big ad spends to grow sales becomes disproven, and huge media empires collapse from lack of revenue. Media is just as desperate to stop Tesla's growth as legacy auto is.

It's not about clicks, it's about the revenue those clicks represent. The media is actively trying to tarnish Tesla to slow sales of cars that don't contribute a portion of their revenue to media empires. The media has the power to influence public opinion and they are not about to let that influence go to waste.