Leading the Monday, March 9th CBS Evening News with Katie Couric was a chilling story: Just hours earlier Jim Sikes, a California Realtor, had lost control of his
Toyota Prius, accelerating at times to 94 mph - even while, he claimed, he was standing on the brake pedal with both feet. But in this original story CBS reported that a California Highway Patrol officer put his car in front of the Prius, using the brakes on his larger and more powerful Ford Crown Vic to stop the Prius and save Sikes' life.
That story was still running on CBS through its Up to the Minute news broadcast with Michelle Geilan at 4 a.m. the next morning. Only by then there was a serious problem with what they were reporting. Now CBS had aerial video of the stopped Prius behind the police cruiser. And, although the cruiser had reportedly gotten in front of Sikes' car and physically stopped it, the video showed no evidence of that interaction whatsoever on the front bumper of the Prius. No damage, not even a scratch.
Of course the incident had happened just hours before Couric's broadcast the night before, so presenting misinformation on air about the event was an easy mistake to make. But who was the producer that, 10 hours later, didn't correct the story when the video showed no front-end damage to the Prius?
Then again, with all the major problems happening nonstop in the world, was a runaway Prius in California the most important story that night? Really, Katie?
News-making News
At about the same time it was revealed that Brian Ross of ABC News had rigged his Toyota exposé video, in which Dr. David Gilbert was shown to have rewired a Toyota Avalon so it would accelerate uncontrollably. Turns out Ross had inserted into the test drive sequence a shot of that Avalon's tachometer hitting 6,000 RPM. But the shot of the high rev readings was taken when the vehicle was sitting still.
ABC News claimed that the original video taken during the test drive was blurry, but the mistake was quickly corrected on its Web site. Now it showed the engine's RPM back at 3,000 during the drive - hardly out of control.
Since presenting the story about Jim Sikes and his Prius, the media have speculated endlessly on the first part of the investigation, based on nothing more than Sikes' public statements. But so far investigators from NHTSA and Toyota have been unable to produce any scenario in which this Toyota hybrid developed a mind of its own.
Moreover, the evidence didn't bear out Sikes' story when his car's braking system was examined. No, the wear patterns showed that only moderate braking had been applied intermittently. The damage that would have been done had both of his feet been "firmly planted on the brake pedal in an attempt to stop his car" was nowhere to be found.
He also claimed he reached down to pull the gas pedal up, but that is physically impossible to do and keep one's eyes on the road. Not to mention the fact he said he was afraid to put the car into neutral because it "might flip."
Give me a break.
Then the Los Angeles Times, which has done more than any other newspaper in America to keep this Toyota story going, ran a piece reporting that in the last decade, NHTSA has recorded more than 13,000 complaints concerning uncontrollable unintended acceleration. Toyota vehicles accounted for only about 25 percent of those cases -- and most of the Toyota complaints came in after this story became a national news event.
Believe It ... or Not
Other news outlets, citing sources such as the Kelley Blue Book or the Automotive Lease Guide, keep saying that Toyota's vaunted resale values are plummeting in the market. In case you're not familiar with how this works, to dealers KBB is not the most respected source for resale values of automobiles, but ALG is. The problem with saying that these media events are slashing Toyota resale values is the fact that they haven't been compared to the resale values of any comparable model made by another manufacturer.
Let's do that.
The National Auto Research Black Book is the publication that most dealers use when bidding on a customer's trade-in. In the Black Book, which derives automobile values from researching recent auctions in local markets, we find that a used Toyota Camry CE has fallen in value by $550 since its January 11th book. But during the same period the Honda Accord LX has fallen by $200. So, if the Camry and Accord have both gone down in value, why report only about Toyota's drop?
Then again, now we are hearing that Toyota's new car sales are up dramatically in March, and many local and national dealers seem to be verifying it. And if March ends with Toyota's sales up by 30 percent or more, right in the big middle of this hysteria about their cars' going crazy, then it can only mean one thing: The public is completely dismissing the media's non-stop "Be scared of Toyota" stories.
Can't Go On Like This
Last year in this column I debunked the Swine Flu Pandemic scare. We were being warned that this horrible flu was imminent, that it could cause more deaths worldwide than flu ever had. Many in the media suggested that it might rival the Spanish Flu Pandemic that swept the world during the Great War. Who came up with that nonsense?
But it had its impact. The first round of reporting on the "Swine Flu" devastated airline traffic to Mexico, and certainly every last death from that flu was reported to add validity to previous reports. But for anyone who knew the first thing about past flu pandemics and their lethality, the Swine Flu Panic of 2009 had not one detail in common with a true pandemic.
When it finally ended, the World Health Organization pegged the deaths worldwide from it at around 15,000 - or less than half the number of flu deaths typically seen in a normal flu season in just the United States. Not only was this not a pandemic, it was one of the mildest forms of the flu seen in decades. Or the exact opposite of what we had been warned about for almost nine dread-filled months.
Whether it is about Toyotas or the flu, every time a sensational story runs its course and the public realizes there was no substance to the scare, it hurts the media. But worse yet it validates those who proclaim loudly that the Mainstream Media are not to be trusted.
And we can't afford not to trust the free press, not if we want to protect our Federal Republic. Because our only source of information on our society, which in turn is how we form reasoned opinions, comes to us from the Fifth Estate. In a world that is complex and often troubled, knowledge of reliable facts is the most important tool we have to make informed decisions. And Americans both depend on and are at the mercy of journalism to keep us a forward-looking and powerful nation -- a leader in the world's progress.
Bunkum Deserves Bashing
Let me sum up the facts behind the current Toyota hysteria for you. For three decades NHTSA has investigated uncontrollable unintended acceleration in automobiles from virtually every manufacturer of cars. They've fielded over 13,000 complaints in the last decade alone. Yet, though it found a few cases of bad cabling, not once has NHTSA ever recalled a car for this condition, because they've never found a defect besides floor mat entrapment.
Toyota's resale values have not fallen substantially more than other competitive makes'. The public is again buying used Toyotas and apparently new ones as if the story had never been reported. Now that it's being examined, the story that Jim Sikes gave the media is unraveling like a loose spool of barbed wire.
And these facts are easy to verify. Yet they seem to be out of the reach of many who want to keep this story going; instead they'll use anyone as a source of information. The one simple question they don't ask is, is this individual telling the truth?
In the media's defense, although they are supposed to be the guideline for reporting, real engineering or science is considered boring news.
In some ways Toyota has brought this on itself; I wrote about the company's GM-like arrogance here years ago. And yes, it's true that once Toyota executives saw that becoming the world's largest car company was within their reach and made that their primary goal - instead of delivering one of the better values in new cars to the public - well, the results were predictable.
Maybe in the end something will come up and I'll have to retract my articles on this subject. However, if I were a betting man, I'd bet that when the last column is written about the Great Toyota Hysteria, it will go the way of the Swine Flu Non-Pandemic of 2009.
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