I know the press will deny this motive, but how can it not be a factor, even slightly?

This is not to mention the constant good press it receives.

Some sentences or terms you use may be factually correct in some context or way, but you seem to be painting a pretty negative picture chaining them together.

Granted, the media also occasionally report on Tesla kicking ass, but the negative press coverage almost seems like a concerted effort to spread fud every chance the media gets. The media have a vested interest in selling drama and they blow shit out of proportion and created issue where there isn't any.

They misuse their responsibility of shaping public opinion when they for example go crazy on someone taking one puff of a blunt and ignoring almost 3 hours of meaningful conversation with a sentence.

If Tesla is in such a precarious financial state and a sorry ass company, why do investors and banks keep lending and pumping money? Because the fundamentals are solid and anyone actually following the numbers and their mission, as opposed to media fud, knows they are about to skyrocket.

Their valuation may have been inflated especially if you believe the value represented the here and now but the fundamentals haven't changed, in fact they may be even better than expected. Once Tesla hits profitability on the account sheet (they already make close to 20% on every Model 3 sold but are 'losing' money because of heavy investment as far as I can tell), they will shoot to the moon because the media will then report Tesla is suddenly a good company and the optics have changed, even though the fundamentals haven't.

They're betting big on at least mid range Trucking switching electric because according to them it'll be cheaper to operate electric fleets. They got a pickup, the model y, planned to begin production soonish. They can lower their unit prices once they hit massive scales due to multiple gigafactories. They operate their own charging network, no other car manufacturer comes anywhere close to what they have.

Granted, Elon is the hype machine behind companies he's running or involved in, but his cult of personality is not all vanity. Why does Elon take no (1 dollar) salary, still holds some 20% of the stock and works his ass off and drains himself to his detriment on Tesla? Because he seems to be for real, a believer, and he delivers even if it's delayed.

Tesla under his leadership has done a great service to humanity, igniting the transformation to moving away from fossil fuels. The other car makers are lagging behind and only now starting to invest billions into battery manufacturing when Tesla is showing them they're for real.

I thought helping with load balancing and storing more volatile non-fossil energy and the creation of smart local grids and allowing people to get off the grid with their home batteries could be a reasonable endeavor for Tesla's battery division.

"Manufacture of consent" is the Walter Lippman term they named the book after.

With a traditional newspaper your readers are footing at least part of the bill for the articles, so you are beholden to them to keep them informed. At least in theory. These days however the only payment is coming from advertisers, so they are the only ones you need to keep happy.

This is the same problem that TV and Radio news has always had, and why they were considered inferior to newspapers for factual reporting. Of course there are a few outlets that are listener/viewer funded, and they tend to be more highly regarded than their counterparts. Outlets like the BBC, NPR, and PBS.

Theoretically cable news shouldn't have this problem since part of the cost comes from people's cable bills, but other forces have conspired to poison that well.

When was that exactly?

Back when I used to pay for a physical newspaper thrown at my door, I remember it often said that the price covered printing and delivery and most of the newspaper's income came from advertising. Was this wrong? It doesn't seem like it... it was sub $1 per issue, which seems about an order of magnitude less than what Amazon would charge.

In other words, using the same style as the adjacent content, and removing any boxes or rules that separate an ad.

It's pretty far down the slope into dishonesty territory w.r.t. separating content from editorial or advertising, and the FTC should investigate and regulate native ads.

I don’t buy that the format is inherently any more dangerous than anything else. All ads need to be respectful of the reader regardless of form.

Self respecting marketers will often say that their goal is to inform, but without fail, that "information" is laced and inextricably woven with manipulative psychology, tangential to the product being sold.

Further, in any industry where it can be employed, it chokes out every other form of revenue. How can anyone compete with "free"? Then, inevitably, when ads enter a space, they quickly dominate and poison it.

Without advertising, the take up of new inventions (things like pressure cookers, microwaves, etc) would be significantly slower. There would be mass confusion about how to get access to uncommon services (legal, accounting and building for example). I wouldn't know what half of the companies out there did if they didn't run some advertising somewhere.

I mean, say there is a company called Stratco. They might sell something I'd buy if I knew about it. How do you propose I figure that out if they don't advertise? I'm not about to research them to find out what it is they sell; there are too many companies out there doing random business->business services I don't want to know about. It is a very neat solution for them to figure out what I do for leisure, subsidise it and pay for an ad or few.

I don't mean any disrespect for journalists and I'm deeply thankful for their work (I even considered becoming one, as a kid), but I don't care for their opinion. I did once, before the internet, because opinions were valuable, as the only ones you were exposed to were family's and friends'.

But today, the internet is a massive opinion building/sharing machine. The last thing we need is the press to do it as well, instead it must be the place where we can expect to find facts and fact checking. I don't have any problem with random people sharing their opinion either - it's cool we can do it - but now I expect more from the press.

Now, I'm well aware solving the native ad problem does not solve the real problem : press has hard time keeping afloat. My usual suggestion about that is for browsers to include means for micro-payment (be it using google pay, cryptocurrencies, apple pay, whatever pay, a new standard, I don't care). The main problem with paywalls to me is that they expect users to subscribe for monthly subscriptions, renewed until they're manually cancelled. This is not how people consume news anymore. They come to an article because of its content, they wish to see that content, they don't want to see other articles. We need to allow people to quickly pay a small fee to see a single article, without all the hassle of using a credit card.

Let MSM die its slow death while new and better services make their debut.

> Mainstream media was shedding eyes

News has been “shedding” paid subscribers. Shedding eyes? Citation needed.

> and under scrutiny

By who?