The Future Fund managing partner Gary Black on Thursday pinned the unfavorable media coverage on EV giant Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) to a lack of effort from the company to manage the press.
What Happened: “I've used this analogy before: It would be like my kid coming home from school upset because he didn't make the baseball team but it turns out he never even tried out for it,” Black said on the heels of Tesla enthusiasts criticizing media over Times magazine not including Elon Musk in its list of 100 most influential people in AI.
Rather than blaming the media, Tesla should put effort into managing the press, Black said, while adding that media is not some “exogenous force.”
“If TSLA doesn't like the narrative of how they're portrayed by the MSM, they should just change it,” he said while adding that Tesla is relying on the media to figure out its message without putting any effort into either crafting or delivering it.
“TSLA just needs to work harder,” Black added.
Why It Matters: Time magazine recently compiled a list of 100 influential people in the field of AI including Alphabet Inc CEO Sundar Pichai, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Open AI CEO Sam Altman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, TSMC CEO CC Wei, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, among others.
Billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Musk did not make it into the list despite his attempts to transition Tesla from purely an EV maker into an AI and robotics company with efforts to build humanoid robots and self-driving technology.
Unlike most companies that actively engage with the media, Tesla does not respond to media queries. It has reportedly not had a dedicated public relations department since October 2020. The broader communication strategy of Tesla relies heavily on Musk and various Tesla handles on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which he also owns.
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