In the aftermath of the U.S. government’s finding that uncontrollable and unintended acceleration in Toyota cars – the BIG automotive story of 2010 – was nothing but a big smelly pile of doodie-doo, Bloomberg Businessweek suggested that the consumer media owed the Japanese automaker a big fat apology.
Good freakin’ luck there, guys.
The consumer media is always sniffing for blood in the water, and like frenzied sharks they can know no bounds. But it never apologizes for its rude table manners or the unintended consequences of its crappy workmanship.
When some California noodlehead allegedly lost complete control of his Prius and buzzed along the freeway at 90+ mph, America was transfixed and angry. Yet no one not even the least of them with an once of common sense suggested that Speed Racer made the whole episode up. That didn’t help their “big company kills people” narrative, didn’t help fill their newscasts.
Some time later it was found out that the man faked the whole episode. Did you know that? No. ’Cause the media didn’t tell you.
Do you know why Sean Kane, the plaintiff attorney champion, is quoted so often by the consumer media especially during the Toyota witch hunt? Because he fancies himself as some sort of expert, and does nothing to tell the media otherwise. So Kane is an expert about tire aging and unintended acceleration and braking systems and vehicle electronics and probably 14th century French literature. Yet he is not an engineer or a chemist or a physicist; the lit thing didn’t come up in his bio, but you never know.
The consumer media is too under-educated and lazy to seek out and find real experts, so they reach out to the author of the last news release they get. The end result is that readers/viewers/listeners get bad, often incomplete and sometimes erroneous info, and companies that don’t deserve it get hurt.
Toyota will get an apology for being crucified at about the same time Bridgestone gets theirs. What the media did to that company, and the good names of both Bridgestone and Firestone, was far, far worse than what it did in 2010 to the world’s largest carmaker. Miles of videotape and forests of newsprint vilified the company, a situation made worse by some pretty bad PR work. In the end, tire underinflation and bad vehicle engineering were found to be the major contributors, not wholesale bad tires.
Take a number, Toyota. It’s gonna be a long wait.