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Comment by 6stringmerc | Hacker News Reader

Oh come on, do you understand the concept of journalism? It's a reporting profession. It's not goddamn PR.

I'm just saying that there are many cases where "a single instance of a journalist having a good experience with a revolutionary pre-release product" turned out to have been the company deliberately misleading the journalist. I'm not claiming that happened here, but I am claiming there is a non-negligible chance it happened.

Fair enough, I'm not trying to say the profession is 100% on the up and up and you're right, people can be manipulated. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to prima-face like you did and dismiss a journalist's impressions (being cited on an Auto enthusiast site mind you) as worthless. It just struck a nerve because I'm a pretty cynical person but do my best to weigh what I've seen / gathered, and while I do admit I think George is an interesting underdog type character and sympathetic in that regard (so to speak), I'm noticing a lot of open hostility toward the product being cloaked in dislike of the person.

I'd agree with this. The journalist in question (Alex Roy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Roy) is an auto enthusiast and race driver, and is well respected even in auto enthusiast circles, which are notoriously anti-self-driving-cars.

Journalists can be manipulated, but Alex Roy's tweet (https://twitter.com/AlexRoy144/status/791996855114694657) is more an endorsement by a car enthusiast with 30+ years of high performance driving experience than a journalist, IMO.

Thanks, I appreciate your context because I think such quality of sources matter. In this instance, I thought it was appropriate to include a 3rd party of sorts who really doesn't have skin in the game.

I'm legitimately not sure if this is sarcasm or not.

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