Here's what I emailed this morning:
Dear Sir or Madam,
As a reader and car fan, I am shocked and disappointed that Mr. Broder lied about his drive with the Model S. Clearly, the car logs as disclosed by Tesla Motors last night are clear evidence of Mr. Broder's attempt to malign the car and the company. Only he would know his motives.
I expect more from the NYT. In a day and age where computer logs can completely refute someone's claims, I would expect the NYT to be more responsible before "standing" behind a nonfactual story. Perhaps if you looked at the data prior to making a public statement, you would have had more credibility on this issue.
I expect that Mr. Broder will be relieved of his position due to his blatant false report and misleading your readers.
Sincerely,
.....
Good idea. I already shared my dsappointment on how such a prestigious publication can publish such lies.
Perhaps this will disillusion some who still buy into the NYT's self-promotion, based on past glories. It is tanking financially and in terms of circulation for a reason. Don't imagine Broder did this on his own hook. The editors were, as always, in complete charge, not just complicit.
Of course, when push comes to shove, Broder will go under the bus if the deception can't be maintained.
What can he say, he said in his article one thing and the Tesla logs show another thing. The cars today come with airline style recorder boxes, GPS, more IT then ever before. The reporter lied and got caught. Journalists have never been honest, its just that today we can catch them lying via technology. He wont be fired, probably get an award for "tough" journalism.
Just followin' orders.
I think the best course of action is the indirect one that Tesla is already taking: have other journalists do the same trip and let the results speak for themselves.
Tesla has little to gain from trying to destory Broder, and the same goes for us as well. Rather than write to the NYT to try to attack the reporter or the article, it would be much better to write a letter to the editor detailing your experiences owning the car, which they would be much more likely to print.
However well worded your letter is, Taylormade, you and I are still third party observers when it comes to either Broder's trip and report or Elon's blog post with the data. We basically have no credibility to attack Broder or support Elon. We just have the opinions of (let's be honest) bias fans.
If you are a Model S owner though, we do have credibility when it comes to describing our own experiences and how you don't seem to have the same kind of experiences Broder did.
It's one thing to post your arguments on forums and article comments, but writing the NYT to tell them they should fire one of their writers is fruitless. Tesla/Elon is in the position to make that attack, but we are not (and I don't think Tesla should seriously make that kind of attack anyway).
Mr. Broder should not be allowed to get away with this. Even if it's only for the purpose of other reporters not trying to do the same act (in the future) to produce a bad article on Tesla Motors or Elon Musk (like mr. Broder did).
And therefore, I have just sent an email to The New York Times.
Here's the CNN video: http://money.cnn.com/video/pf/2013/02/15/w-tesla-model-s-test-drive-dc-b...
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