So Much For Media Bias: Everybody Bashes Toyota
With everybody in the media, including editorial cartoonists, piling on Toyota and its gas-pedal recall troubles, I hope this lays to rest one of my pet peeves and a persistent urban legend of auto industry media coverage.
That's the widely held belief that U.S. auto writers like me are "out to get" Chrysler, Ford (F) and General Motors, while going out of our way to praise imports in general and Toyota (TM) in particular. It's the auto industry equivalent of the supposed media bias in favor of Democrats over Republicans.
If anything, I think you could argue that for every supposedly pro-Toyota story over the years, there have been just as many stories that routinely say imports "stole" market share from the domestic automakers. The terminology makes it sound like the import brands were stealing something that wasn't rightfully theirs, or that customers who switched to imports somehow didn't know what they were doing.
Anyway, the legendary pro-Toyota bias seems to have disappeared overnight, because of the Toyota gas-pedal recall. Open up just about any news source today, print or electronic, and you'll see Toyota taking it on the chin.
I hope media-bashers will remember that once the Toyota furor dies down, but I doubt it.
For years, any time anybody wrote anything favorable about Toyota - often without even mentioning Chrysler, Ford or GM -- they could count on being accused of being unnecessarily negative; of being disinterested in "good news"; of giving Toyota a free ride; of nitpicking U.S. automakers to death.
When I wrote for businessweek.com, I started noticing a reader I think of as "the Toyota sludge guy," who thought I should be doing more to alert readers to the way Toyota handled some customers whose engine oil turned to "sludge." He submitted comments bashing Toyota after a lot of my stories, whether the stories were positive or negative with regard to Toyota, or whether they even had anything to do with Toyota.
Over the years, because of my supposed love for Toyota, I've even been accused of being unpatriotic, which I particularly resent.
The bottom line is, Toyota is now taking what look like some well-deserved lumps for its handling of the gas-pedal crisis. That ought to dispel the urban legend.