Most people expect journalism to be about the cold hard facts, possibly biased in it's tone and interpretation, but not altering the facts in favor of a narrative. Manipulating quotes is another journalistic favorite, because hey, just because it's between quotation marks doesn't mean they literally said that...
In the real world, that is called "lying and deceiving", unless it's marked "fiction" (or "advertising").
Every time people find out the truth doesn't match the reports, journalism loses a little more respect, but for some insane reason journalists insist on maintaining this completely outdated practice that is no longer justifiable in today's world of video, audio and instant global communication. And of course, logs...
this is a very old way of thinking about journalism and contrasts bizarrely with your assertion that building narratives is an outdated practice. in today's world of A/V/Instant communication, its becoming more and more clear that not only will people not pay attention to "cold hard fact" journalism, but what a lot of people actually want isn't merely narratives, its narratives that they agree with.
This doesn't make the 'new' way any better, and only shows how _wrong_ it is.
That's right, they don't expect it. They are merely disappointed if they don't.
I do agree that the nature of news is changing as are readers expectations.
Not having a dog in this fight, I would also characterize it as lying. I have the expectation that a journalist will not construct a narrative, but will endeavor to faithfully report events as experienced and informed, as well as revealing personal biases and possible sources of error.
Driving like a normal person would - letting the car charge and trying to keep it near full - wouldn't have matched the narrative he had in mind, so he didn't do it. The narrative he had in mind involved desperately limping from station to station trying to get a little juice, so that's the experience that he constructed.
How an unbiased reporter would have done it: charge to full, pay attention to mileage and time to charge, repeatedly charge to full throughout trip, discuss the time limitations (must stop for an hour+ on long trips instead of a ten minute gasoline stop...), see if mileage matches expectations, and so on.
That wasn't the story Broder had in mind.