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Top Gear wasn't dismissed because Tesla was wrong, it was dismissed as Top Gear presented their case that they were demonstrating the cars for entertainment and

Top Gear wasn't dismissed because Tesla was wrong, it was dismissed as Top Gear presented their case that they were demonstrating the cars for entertainment and not as a factual review. The judge felt the distinction had merit and dismissed the case, Tesla felt differently of course.

thisone 14y ago
exactly. Top Gear isn't a news program, it's an entertainment program. People don't watch Top Gear to get actual car reviews, they watch to drool over the car porn and laugh at Jezza in a Robin Reliant. I will say I don't agree with what they did with the Tesla, but it's a separate issue from the NYTimes article.
Kylekramer 14y ago
This just isn't true. The entertainment angle was not at all why the judge threw out the case. It was because they felt Telsa's claims were vague and that people understand that cars perform differently under different circumstances: http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2012/02/23/tesla-libel-action-against-top-gear-fails-again/ http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2012/02/23/tesla-libel...
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Interesting, after it blew up I could swear I'd read that one of the arguments the TG legal team used was "It's all done for entertainment, the situations we place cars are in are completely unrealistic".
makomk 14y ago
Nope. They lost because, even if some viewers did interpret it as a serious factual review with no dramatized elements, Tesla Motors still couldn't come up with any plausible justification for why those viewers would be mislead in a way that would actually harm Tesla even slightly. (English libel law doesn't work the same way as US libel law; IIRC, if you can show that a reasonable viewer could have interpreted the broadcast in a way that's both defamatory and false, then that's libel even if the broadcaster never intended it to be understood that way and even if all or nearly all viewers interpreted it correctly.)

thisone 14y ago

exactly. Top Gear isn't a news program, it's an entertainment program. People don't watch Top Gear to get actual car reviews, they watch to drool over the car porn and laugh at Jezza in a Robin Reliant. I will say I don't agree with what they did with the Tesla, but it's a separate issue from the NYTimes article.

Kylekramer 14y ago

This just isn't true. The entertainment angle was not at all why the judge threw out the case. It was because they felt Telsa's claims were vague and that people understand that cars perform differently under different circumstances: http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2012/02/23/tesla-libel-action-against-top-gear-fails-again/ http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2012/02/23/tesla-libel...

nicholassmith 14y ago
Interesting, after it blew up I could swear I'd read that one of the arguments the TG legal team used was "It's all done for entertainment, the situations we place cars are in are completely unrealistic".

makomk 14y ago

Nope. They lost because, even if some viewers did interpret it as a serious factual review with no dramatized elements, Tesla Motors still couldn't come up with any plausible justification for why those viewers would be mislead in a way that would actually harm Tesla even slightly. (English libel law doesn't work the same way as US libel law; IIRC, if you can show that a reasonable viewer could have interpreted the broadcast in a way that's both defamatory and false, then that's libel even if the broadcaster never intended it to be understood that way and even if all or nearly all viewers interpreted it correctly.)