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Business Economics
As I wrote here, in the early 1990s, NBC was caught lying about trucks produced by General Motors. I wrote:
NBC tried to stage an accident in which a collision would cause an explosion. It didn’t work. So NBC rigged a tiny explosive in the truck and got its explosion. General Motors did some good detective work to uncover the scandal and bring it to the public’s attention. Only then did NBC’s Jane Pauley go on the air to apologize.
Well, it’s now ABC’s turn. Reporter Brian Ross was caught lying about Toyota. Here’s the story. This one is less extreme than the one in the early 1990s. But it’s a lie.
HT to Lew Rockwell.
READER COMMENTS
yoshi
Mar 5 2010 at 6:22pm
I don’t know what I find scarier – that ABC lied about a story or that people still pay attention to Lew Rockwell.
David R. Henderson
Mar 5 2010 at 7:29pm
yoshi writes:
I don’t know what I find scarier – that ABC lied about a story or that people still pay attention to Lew Rockwell.
Yoshi, you can’t have it both ways. You’ve allowed that you might be scared by an ABC story that you know I learned about from Lew Rockwell. You also imply that one shouldn’t pay attention to Lew Rockwell. Then why be scared by the ABC story?
The fact is that you and I both have minds and abilities to analyze. Whatever the source of the information, you need to use your mind to judge.
Sean A
Mar 6 2010 at 12:10am
“people still pay attention to Lew Rockwell.”
Actually more than ever
Anyways, what’s GM’s angle here? They obviously used resources in their investigative work to uncover this slandering of a competitor. It’s one thing if they simply determined the report must be false and declared it a sham at no direct material cost. But apparently they’re such good Samaritans that they saw it fit to uncover this lie at their own expense.
Sean A
Mar 6 2010 at 12:16am
I’ll also note that I find that semi-literate mortgage lending spam above my previous post, quite amusing and somewhat worrisome; worrisome in that it seems to be the logical extension of trying to solve a recession with the exact same policies that caused it.
Scott
Mar 6 2010 at 5:06am
Given the significance of the scene in question, I don’t think ABC’s blunder can reasonably be put on the same level as NBC’s. ABC’s lie was an editing choice, poor as it may have been. NBC’s lie was an outright falsification of a vehicle explosion.
R. Pointer
Mar 6 2010 at 12:25pm
The whole toyota blow up has been absolutely a show of nativism and bs.
Okay, so Toyota has some major production issues. The reputation they built up over the past 30 years is one based on lots of consumers liking their experiences with their cars.
My extended family converted from GM products to Nissan products in the early 1990s. Nissans are absolutely great cars. They have awesome, efficient engines and they are light – toyota’s seem to be heavier. And they are constructed well. Oh, and they are made here in the USA. Not that that would change my mind about what kind of car to buy.
To be honest, I just don’t get how on recall is supposed to sully Toyota’s reputation. The failure rate must be so low as not to be distinguishable from zero.
The question for the media should be, “why does reputation work for GM products but not for Toyota?” That is, why is GM’s bad rep true and Toyota’s good rep false? Maybe both are totally manufactured BS. Maybe media should shut up.
Patrick R. Sullivan
Mar 6 2010 at 6:56pm
Where did you get the idea that GM had anything to do with uncovering it?
Sean A
Mar 6 2010 at 7:24pm
Patrick,
“General Motors did some good detective work to uncover the scandal and bring it to the public’s attention.”
Yancey Ward
Mar 6 2010 at 7:45pm
The car in the report is actually a GM.
Ok, I made that up. Please forgive me, I was auditioning for a job with ABC.
Courtney Norris
Mar 22 2010 at 8:35pm
All of the mess going on with the Toyota problems and all the lies being told on television just shows you that you can not believe the media. People try to lie to make themselves look better and others worse. With GM investigating the NBC explosion shows that not only are they nosey, they are trying to start trouble. There must have been something sparked to make GM know that the explosion was a fake. All I know is you can not believe anything you here on the television.
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