Why Forbes is so Keen on Ruining Elon Musk?

Vanessa Stenberg
3 min readApr 13, 2017

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Soon after Elon Musk made headlines with the fastest commercial electric car in the world, Forbes published an article on its magazine. The article wasn’t about Musk’s engineering achievements or how he was set on revolutionizing the automobile industry. That’s not in line with the Forbes mantra.

Rather, Forbes, through its editors and writers, set out to portray Elon Musk as the biggest nightmare for taxpayers. Elon Musk must have felt like a nerdy kid getting beat up on the first day of school. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Musk is about to crush the entire oil industry with his Teslas, or Forbes has it in for the guy. Whatever it is, there’s no right reason for a media outlet to print false details knowing thousands of readers rely on it for information.

This is the main premise of the article: if Tesla stopped selling cars, everyone would save money. The writer peppered all manner of numbers and statistics in the article, supporting his thesis, but even with mathematical backing, it takes nothing more than logic to see through the agenda here.

Essentially, the author argued that the cost of building Tesla cars increased everyone’s taxes. However, you cannot use such arguments to curtail progress. It’s like arguing that we would all have saved a whole lot of money if we didn’t invest in building roads. Or we’d saved billions of dollars if we didn’t invest in space technology and research.

If human advancement was halted because we want to save out pocket change, then we would still be living in villages ruled over by tribal kings, and smartphones would only exist in the realm of sci-fi litetures. You wouldn’t even watch sci-fi films because there would be no satellites to broadcast your favorite shows to your location.

Putting aside the writer’s logical approach in the article, the writer’s name is Patrick Michaels, there’s another interesting and disturbing twist to the tale. It turns out oil companies’ line up Michael’s pockets with thousands of dollars each year to write pro-fossil fuel articles.

Patrick Michaels has been in the payroll of oil companies for the last two decades. Each year he writes a paper telling anyone within pixel range that there is no such thing as global warming or carbon footprints. He’s clearly either deluded or he’s secretly a prophet who’s certain of his predictions.

What’s evidently apparent from the article is Forbes departure from real journalism to click-bait journalism. It seems that’s where the real money is, seeing the failed buyout of the media outlet by foreign investors.

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Vanessa Stenberg

Jewish mother of 2, Love braids and Journalist (while some still call me that) Ex @Forbes @TribuneMedia