A few thoughts: 1. so it looks like the editor concedes that the truth is somewhere in between the original review and Musk's rebuttal. But the original review

A few thoughts: 1. so it looks like the editor concedes that the truth is somewhere in between the original review and Musk's rebuttal. But the original review is up as is. It's not amended, not corrected in any way. 2. Elon Musk said his faith in the NYTimes is restored over twitter. This to me looks like Elon made a deliberate decision to pick a fight with a single contributor and not with the entire newspaper. Besides, Elon knows other people will continue fighting on his behalf, so he can now take the high road and back off. Good tactics here. 3. The spin by the NYT editor is really clever. By quoting another person who mostly sides with Tesla and agreeing with that person she comes across as responding to the conflict with substance. But because the words aren't her own she can keep her status as a mostly impartial arbiter. And because she didn't say which parts of the quoted response she agreed with she can deny any part of it if needed! What she did here is equivalent to composing a list of 7 statements and adding to the bottom "I agree with 4 out of the 7 statements above". Sneaky sneaky. 4. Her final conclusion is that "people will go on contesting these points" but ultimately "few conclusions are unassailable". That's pretty much a classic "it's all relative" sort of response. The fact that people are in vocal disagreement doesn't mean you can just wave your hands and say essentially "well, the situation is just complex" and use that to justify keeping the original article up unchanged.