Over the past few months, Elon Musk has been rather open about his distaste for traditional media outlets who, so Musk claims, have a penchant for writing disingenuous hit pieces designed to portray Tesla in a negative light. What’s more, Musk has also intimated that a number of these hit pieces are being churned out with the express intention to keep Tesla’s share price down. Put simply, Musk believes that Tesla short-sellers are largely responsible for some of the more negative, if not downright fictional, takes on Tesla’s business.
The latest chapter in Musk’s ongoing war with the media is sensational even by Musk’s standards. Specifically, Musk took to Twitter earlier today and called out Business Insider writer Linette Lopez for penning a number of “false” articles about Tesla. Moreover, Musk added that a former Tesla employee sold proprietary information about Tesla’s business happenings to the very same writer. And as if that weren’t crazy enough, Musk also insinuated that Lopez’s anti-Tesla takes were perhaps motivated by Jim Chanos, a well-known investor who has a lot of money riding on Tesla failing.
Musk’s tweets on the matter can be viewed below.
@lopezlinette has published several false articles about Tesla, including a doozy where she claimed Tesla scrapped more batteries than our total S,X &3 production number, which is physically impossible.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2018
Sounds very sketchy if true. @lopezlinette, is it possible you’re serving as an inside trading source for one of Tesla’s biggest short-sellers? An ex-Tesla employee just went on record formally claiming you bribed him & he sent you valuable Tesla IP in exchange. Is this true?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2018
Of course, BI wasn’t the only target of Musk’s ire today. The above story aside, Musk also took a few jabs at Reuters for posting “relentlessly negative” pieces about Tesla.
“Reuters is relentlessly negative about Tesla,” Musk wrote. “They just wrote a bogus article saying S production last week was low by 800 cars. S/X annual prod is set at ~100k, ie 1,900/week. Tesla built 1,913 S/X cars at our standard ~50/50 split last week, which is right on target.”
Musk’s squabbles with journalists aside, the biggest Tesla story these days is that the company actually managed to hit its goal of manufacturing 5,000 Model 3 units per week by the end of June. Going forward, the looming question is whether or not Tesla can sustain and improve upon that production rate over the next few weeks.
