It was a sad day when I realized that the media are basically just out to sell newspapers. I learned it about 15 years ago when I started building content management technology for them and found out that they were basically just a vehicle for classified ads. Every page of content was measured against the value it would bring in ads.
For a long time I don't think this applied to the (previously) great institutions like the New York Times, but that has obviously changed over the past few years. They're screwed because people don't want to read paper anymore and classified ads are a thing of the past in newspapers.
From cow-towing to the Bush administration when it was all WMDs all the time, to going for the jugular when WMDs were not found, The New York Times basically prints what people want to hear. And sadly they've been doing it with Tesla as well.
For the past couple of years The New York Times kept writing about how great things were at Tesla and how it was the future of the automotive industry. Frankly, they should have been more balanced in their viewpoints, but as we have seen, they have lost their ability to be balanced.
Now, with the economy at a stand-still and Tesla asking for government support to continue to build it's next, more affordable, version, they've gone for the jugular.
And not in the Opinion section. No-sirree, they printed an article as if it was news?!? Have they lost all their integrity? I mean, if they really feel that way, put it in the editorial section. They're wrong, and using false facts, but they're used to doing that.
Instead they wrote an article in the main newspaper, by someone who claims to be a technology journalist, basically telling the government to support the welfare jobs at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, instead of supporting a company that could actually make a difference in the future of the country.
I never thought we'd see the Bill O'Reilly style of journalism in The New York Times. It's a sad day indeed.
Thankfully there have been strong responses in the blogosphere tearing apart this guy's logic. Jason Calacanis takes it blow by blow.
I for one am going to find my news elsewhere.
