Reuters today won a prestigious George Polk Award in the Business Reporting category for a series of investigations that uncovered systemic harms to consumers, workers and lab animals at Elon Musk’s companies that regulators had failed to police, sparking investigations in the U.S. and Europe and calls for action from U.S. lawmakers.
‘The Musk Industrial Complex,’ by Marisa Taylor, Steve Stecklow, Norihiko Shirouzu, Hyunjoo Jin, Rachael Levy, Kevin Krolicki, Marie Mannes, Waylon Cunningham, Koh Gui Qin and the staff at Reuters, documented a rising toll of needless injuries and deaths of workers at rocket builder SpaceX and abuse of laboratory animals at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-implant company. Other stories found that his groundbreaking electric-car company, Tesla, covered up dangerous defects in steering and suspension parts; rigged in-dash driving-range estimates in its cars; invaded drivers’ privacy by sharing sensitive images recorded by their vehicles; and made Tesla Insurance customers wait months for claim payouts.
“Reuters journalists exposed stark contradictions between the Musk empire’s public claims and the reality of how the firms operate out of view. The series is a triumph of deep sourcing and dogged reporting by journalists collaborating across the health, finance, automotive and investigative teams,” said Alessandra Galloni, Editor-in-Chief, Reuters. “I’m incredibly proud of the team for their meticulous and relentless work in exposing these abuses and the coverups that followed them.”
Following the Reuters series, U.S. federal prosecutors launched a probe into whether Tesla inflated driving-range estimates, and consumers also filed at least four class-action lawsuits over the matter. After Reuters reported that Tesla knew far more about suspension and steering defects than it had ever told regulators or consumers, traffic safety authorities in Norway and Sweden confirmed in Reuters exclusives that they were investigating frequent suspension failures. In Washington, two U.S. senators wrote to Musk, citing the “alarming” Reuters investigation and demanding that Tesla recall defective parts and correct its “apparent false and misleading representations” to U.S. traffic safety regulators.
Three U.S. lawmakers issued similar calls for action following what one called the “deeply troubling” Reuters investigation into SpaceX that documented hundreds of previously unreported worker injuries, including a fatality. Two lawmakers called for deeper scrutiny of needless deaths and suffering by laboratory animals at Neuralink after a December 2022 Reuters exclusive that reported a federal animal-welfare probe into the firm and widespread employee backlash over botched experiments.
You can read ‘The Musk Industrial Complex’ here.
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Heather Carpenter
Heather.Carpenter @ tr.com