FILE- In this Sept. 17, 2018, file photo Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk speaks after announcing Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as the first private passenger on a trip around the moon in Hawthorne, Calif. Tesla Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, Oct. 24. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)
Apparently, running to publish a one-sided statement without any context or actual investigation passes for “journalism” these days over at CNN.
That’s exactly what they did in an article targeting Tesla’s Elon Musk this morning. CNN published a short article based on a statement from the governor’s office in California that was easily disproved with even the slightest amount of research. Instead of insuring they had all the facts, the liberal network tried to paint Musk as reneging on his promise to provide ventilators to local hospitals.
Three weeks after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he had obtained more than 1,000 ventilators to help California hospitals treating patients infected with the coronavirus, the governor’s office says none of the promised ventilators have been received by hospitals https://t.co/u3NNpxbvsN
— CNN (@CNN) April 16, 2020
There are some details to get into here, details that CNN doesn’t note at all because they’d rather target Musk for doing a good thing than tell the whole story.
This all started with a hit piece via the Sacramento Bee that appeared in the opinion section. It went after Musk and called for more “oversight” from Gov. Gavin Newsom based on the false notion that the Tesla founder had not delivered what he promised. That’s where this quote from the governor’s office came from.
“Elon Musk and his team told the state that he had procured ventilators and wanted to distribute them directly to hospitals with shortages,” a spokesperson for the California governor’s Office of Emergency Services told CNN on Wednesday. “The Administration is communicating every day with hospitals across the state about their ventilator supply and to date we have not heard of any hospital system that has received a ventilator directly from Tesla or Musk.”
Except Musk never said he was going to deliver the kind of invasive ventilators he’s now being trashed for not providing. What he promised was a different kind of ventilator called a BiPAP, which is also being used in New York.
If anyone wants to apologize to Elon, you know where to find him. 😉 pic.twitter.com/nG66OdlrkK
— 🐶Earl of Frunkpuppy🐶 (@28delayslater) April 2, 2020
That is cited in the above Sacramento Bee article, though they apparently didn’t know what they were citing because they used it as supposed evidence he had lied. Again, CNN didn’t bother to verify any of this information or seek further context. They claim they asked Tesla for comment, but this story was published at 6:00 AM this morning. It’s fairly likely Musk wasn’t given ample time to actually respond.
In retaliation to all this, Musk went to Twitter and absolutely wrecked CNN with receipts showing their story is false.
.@GavinNewsom please fix this misunderstanding
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2020
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2020
https://t.co/2KfHKLfUJh https://t.co/yYbUdL6acQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2020
In summary, Musk promised to provide these specific machines (he even named the brand in the original announcement), he delivered them, hospitals thanked him, and CNN still rushed to push false claims about him framed up by an opinion piece from a local newspaper. Why? Because the media are just garbage. They are garbage when it comes to their standards of journalism, and they are garbage when it comes to how they treat people.
The writer who wrote this up over at CNN attempted to deflect, which was expected.
Nonsense. CNN decided to pick that quote out of an opinion piece from the Sacramento Bee, do zero research, and regurgitate the headline accusing Musk of not delivering. That's on you.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) April 16, 2020
It’s this kind of stuff that causes people with means to think twice about even helping people. Unless you carry a certain far-left political view, all it does it open you up to baseless criticism. CNN should be better than this, but they aren’t.
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