#Pravduh About #Tesla October Report — Not Much To Be Negative About, But 220 Negative Headlines Nonetheless

November 5th, 2018 by Chanan Bos

Intro

We are very excited to be able to tell you that while this month started out not that well, the last few weeks totally made up for that and the results show it. We would very much like to thank Maye Musk for retweeting our reports and calling out the most negative, sad, biased authors. While we can’t be sure what helped the most, we believe that the actions of Maye Musk and the times Elon Musk liked and commented on the reports have slowly helped bring some of the mainstream media back to their senses over the last two months.

Then again, huge credit goes out to all of Tesla for such an amazing performance last quarter, which made a huge difference in the press coverage. That said, as we’ve noted in previous weeks, we believe there was almost nothing to be negative about in October and a tremendous amount of good news, yet many in the mainstream financial press have kept running negative or semi-negative headlines about Tesla. Even with record-breaking good news, Tesla passing up Porsche and Jaguar in global sales, and Tesla passing up all other luxury automakers in the US, major outlets have snuck “But …” addendums into headlines or even led with negativity.

What’s worse — when you turn a molehill into a mountain for weeks on end or when you sully indisputably positive news when a lot of negative speculation?

Just as last month, we will start with the monthly report and follow that up with the weekly report. For authors, however, the monthly report will only include the data for the month of October, while the weekly report below it will have total cumulative data (as always).

For those who have never seen one of our #Pravduh reports before, make sure to check our methodology explanation and short history at the end.

Also, we wanted to emphasize that each week we are sharing the raw data (headlines and scores). You can scan through yourself if you want to double check our findings or just see the headlines. Additionally, for more context and comparison, you can check out all CleanTechnica stories about Tesla.

#Pravduh About #Tesla

October 2018 Report

Since we started tracking headlines, this is the first month in which the number of negative articles is less than the number of positive articles.

Because we also cover a lot of news publishers with notably fewer articles than the ones in the chart above, here’s a second chart that compares the news publishers that fell under “Other” in the chart above:

The following might be our most important analysis of all. There are a lot of data embedded (and you probably want to click the image to see it larger). Basically, what we did was compare negative and positive articles to changes in the stock price.

Now, the question remains whether it was the actual events that lowered or raised the stock price or the way news was spun or the number of articles published about that topic on that day. In other words, how much were shareholders influenced by the sheer volume and messaging of negative and positive headlines versus specific storylines? Additionally, we did not conduct a regression analysis here and cannot say conclusively whether news coverage influenced the stock price.

With our weekly recurring headlines analysis, we thoroughly look through all the headlines to make sure all stories about a specific topic are added into the calculations. For example, one article might say China and another Shanghai. We try to ensure topics are grouped appropriately in order to communicate what the media focused on the most.

The next matter on our itinerary is tracking the authors who published this news. While the whole list is too long to sensibly include (since there are many authors who have written just one or two pieces about Tesla), here are the 21 who published more than 5 articles about Tesla in the month of October, ranked from most negative to most positive:

The neutrality index goes from -100% to 100%. In this system, 0% is neutral. The number of negative/positive articles and percentages are also still displayed. We don’t show the numbers of neutral headlines, though. This system provides a good breakdown of how authors are positioned.

For this entire section, note: At major media outlets, there are often headline writers who control this part of articles, but we find tracking the authors is also interesting and potentially useful for considering what kind of stories the authors tend to write.

Again, here is the data from this past week in case you want to have a closer look at the raw data.

#Pravduh About #Tesla

Weekly Report #9 (October 27– November 2)

For the third week in a row, the number of negative articles is lower than the number of positive articles.

The 6 sites publishing the most about Tesla last week were: Business Insider, Bloomberg, Fox News, Reuters and CNBC.

Here is a second chart comparing the news publishers that fell under “Other” in the chart above:

The next matter on our itinerary is tracking the authors who published this news. While the whole list is too long to put here since there are many authors who have written just one piece about Tesla, here are the 31 who published more than 8 articles about Tesla since we started tracking on September 1st, ranked from least positive to most positive:

The neutrality index goes from -100% to 100%. In this system, 0% is neutral. The number of negative/positive headlines and percentages are also displayed. This system provides a good breakdown of how authors are positioned.

Again, here is the data from this past week in case you want to have a closer look at the raw data.

What Changed With Tesla Last Week

Here’s a summary of substantial Tesla news and potential news ordered by day.

You can consider for yourself what were objectively the important updates in the “Tesla story” last week.

Our Methodology

As you have seen, we track Tesla headlines and rate them based on their implications for Tesla. We cover 22 major media sites. We rate all of their Tesla headlines as either positive, negative, or neutral. Unlike a more nuanced scale, this system is based on solidly objective evaluation and contains minimal bias. A handful of us have been checking the headlines and we do not find much variation in how a headline is rated, because it is a straightforward and clear system. If there is variation in how a headline is rated, we discuss and come to an agreed conclusion.

We define journalism as: the pursuit of facts and reporting on them. When you systematically report with a slant that doesn’t line up with reality, or omit facts that are inconvenient to your point of view, that distorts the general truth. In order to be as transparent as possible, all the data our analysis is based on are published at the end of each report. We report the facts and let you draw your own conclusions about the story behind these stories.

We encourage you to check our data and have fun experimenting in the evaluator role — that is can be even more illuminating than simply looking at the results. We also encourage you to let us know if you notice something that was rated incorrectly or have suggestions on how to further improve our system.

#Pravduh History & Extra Context

The CleanTechnica team started creating weekly and monthly #Pravduh About #Tesla reports in September 2018 after getting really tired of oddly negative Tesla coverage in mainstream media outlets, and after a little stimulation from some trolling by Elon Musk.

For those who somehow missed it, about 5 months ago, Elon Musk got fed up with so much of the media publishing FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) articles about Tesla, and in some cases outright misinformation, that he presented an idea.

Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication. Thinking of calling it Pravda … — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 23, 2018

Even if some of the public doesn’t care about the credibility score, the journalists, editors & publications will. It is how they define themselves. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 23, 2018

Most people who follow Tesla closely agree that it has been the target of far too much misleading, unfair, negative media coverage. We here at CleanTechnica define journalism as: the pursuit of facts and reporting on them in a useful, proper context. When you systematically report with a slant that doesn’t line up with reality, or omit facts that are inconvenient to your point of view, that distorts the general truth of the story.

We at CleanTechnica felt something did need to be done. As the stories — whether in the New York Times, New York Post, Forbes, Business Insider, CNBC, or Bloomberg — got worse, we were finally pushed to more systematic, regular action. Writers on our site had long been informing readers about Tesla FUD and misinformation, and readers had been informing writers. We wrote articles digging into the facts and the finances. But sporadic, one-off attempts at correcting the record didn’t seem to be enough. Putting our own playful spin on the “Pravda” name Elon mentioned on Twitter, we decided to create #Pravduh About #Tesla.

Of all the parts of a story, the headlines have the biggest influence — by far — so we decided to focus our efforts on headline analysis. We have found the results to be very interesting so far, and we’re super curious to see how they evolve over time. Apparently, Elon is interested in this as well.

Very interesting — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 17, 2018

Will be interesting to see how this evolves over time — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 17, 2018

We would also like to thank Maye Musk for her support of this project and for using the data to try to improve Tesla coverage.

For 10 years I've been advised to ignore negative headlines. That has been hard, but now I've had enough! The media can start hating this grandmother. Clean energy will win. #ShareTheHate #Pravduh #Tesla https://t.co/4XsiCMsvGp — Maye Musk (@mayemusk) October 5, 2018

FUD is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. According to @cleantechnica , @CNBC has the most negative Tesla headlines. Does anyone care to give a reason? #FUD https://t.co/S84fepOrsW — Maye Musk (@mayemusk) October 6, 2018

.@nytimes had 100% negative headlines about @Tesla in September, according to @cleantechnica Among the haters/writers is @nealboudette He really doesn’t like breathing clean air. Let’s see how many of his shortsellers/oilbuddies trash me now. #grandmotherwhocares https://t.co/2l1VjU2GgZ — Maye Musk (@mayemusk) October 5, 2018

The more these #Pravda About #Tesla reports get shared online through social media, the more people will take notice. If there is an ongoing heavily negative slant about Tesla in certain outlets — even as Tesla has so much positive news to share — people should be aware of this and approach each new story with that in mind.









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