Elon, is that you? (J/k) Firstly, this was Tesla’s PR team, not journalists. As a company, you’d think they would want people whose role is to talk to the publ

Elon, is that you? (J/k) Firstly, this was Tesla’s PR team, not journalists. As a company, you’d think they would want people whose role is to talk to the public (consumers or journalists), as people not trained in that capacity doing so can quickly get you into trouble. One misstep can get you a visit from the SEC or cost you market share. Given Musk’s history of foot-in-mouth disease, this seems like a pretty awful business move. Secondly, though your point about journalists and papers isn’t really hyper-relevant to having a pr team: journalists do the job of a) filtering out the noise (useless info), b) filtering out the lies from corporations, government, or people, c) investigating issues of public interest, and d) alerting the public when these issues are important or problematic. While individuals could do this themselves, we don’t all have the time, and it makes sense to have people who do this professionally (and better). The role of the free press has been this for a long time, and the calls against the press are a coordinated strategy by groups whose interests are opposed to knowledge being in public hands and who fear being investigated.