The journalists were banned after they discovered the time was not proximate to any flights, and the location wasn't near an airport. Elon was caught in a lie.

The journalists were banned after they discovered the time was not proximate to any flights, and the location wasn't near an airport. Elon was caught in a lie. Subsequently he displayed juvenile behavior, shutting down Spaces for the entire product and banning real journalists from important publications. Furthermore, N628TS only appeared on crowdsourced plane trackers. Nobody, not even Area-51 workers, fly without a tail number visible.