Car company failures? Blame the media

Like a scene from an action movie, Chrysler has rolled off the edge of a financial cliff and burst into flames. GM is heading around the same sharp curve, and even the company's boss thinks it can't hold the road.

"Given the objectives that we've set for ourselves it's more probable that we need to accomplish our goals in a bankruptcy," General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson said.

When the once-mighty GM, long-time barometer of the health of the American economy, crashes and burns people will ask, "Who's to blame?"

Why did no one see the curve on the road ahead? Why didn't somebody say something? 

As much as it is the instinct of every ink-stained wretch to dislike the sentiment of "Blame the Media," I can't help but wonder if North American automotive journalism shares part of the responsibility.

I remember as a young radio reporter in Regina, I was sent to cover a consumer story. A frustrated car buyer, sick of the repeated trouble he'd had with his car, had decided to take direct action. He attached a giant lemon to the top of his car and parked in front of the offending dealership. The dealer, in turn, parked two large vans, one in front and one behind the car, to block the view of people driving past.

The next day, I looked in the paper to see how they had covered the story. It was a perfect reader-friendly tale. The common man, pushed to the limits, is driven to take action, David against Goliath. I flipped through the pages. The story wasn't there. It turned out that CBC was the only media outlet that had covered the story.

Another time a close friend who was a newspaper reporter wrote a story about secret warranties. They involve the faults in various car models, well known to dealers and to manufacturers, but not publicly announced. If a car owner complains in just the right way, the company will fix the problem for free.  

Car ads have been a staple of the North American advertising market. Whether explicit or implied, the threat of pulling those ads has always hung over the media business model.

I read my friend's story. It was measured, well-written, properly attributed. My friend's editor said there was no room in the paper that day. No room that week either. It turned out there was never room in the paper. The story was never printed.  

Those were the days before the internet. Now if you search "secret warranties" in Google you get 16,000 hits. Try searching for the same term in the archive of your favourite daily.

Car ads have been a staple of the North American advertising market. Whether explicit or implied, the threat of pulling those ads has always hung over the media business model. Talking to a friend in a senior position at a big daily, I know there are periodic decisions to change their automotive sections from glorified advertising supplements to real critical journalism, but somehow it never really happens. Car reviews are always basically favourable. The inevitable colour ad on a nearby page.

By contrast, check out the amusing Jeremy Clarkson's Jetta review in the London Times titled "Well done VW, it's the most boring car in history," and finishing with the line "I cannot recommend it to you in any way." The BBC's Top Gear spends a fortune doing interesting things like smashing cars into walls at high speed and showing the details in revealing slow motion. No punches pulled there.

Reading a North American car section is like entering a twilight zone where all cars with small engines are "underpowered." Where every small car is labelled "entry level," assuming the ambition of all middle-aged Corolla drivers is to work their way up to something bigger because they will only get to heaven if they die driving a Hummer. Where the very most economical time to buy a car is always now. Where the future is always filled with fabulous "concept cars" that somehow never seems to move from concept to market.

Why do car articles assume more power is better? Why don't we see stories about the consumer psychology of brand inflation where little Corollas grow larger and larger over the years to be replaced by "entry level" Echoes and Yarises? Where's the probing investigative piece on auto industry lobbying?

Back when the car sections were filled with almost nothing but SUVs on heavy truck frames, where were the warnings that we had seen this all happen before following the first oil crisis? That we were on a sharp curve in danger of rolling off? That the last time, small foreign cars arrived in North America and kicked our domestic industry's butt?

Articles echo the car company reps who talk about having to "invent" fuel efficient technology. Where are the stories that in Europe the VW Jetta (which seems like a perfectly nice car to my boring Canadian sensibilities) comes with a powerful 1.4 litre engine that gets seven litres/100 km, while here in Canada we can only get the 2.5 litre engine? Golly, somebody should invent that here, too. Why did no one mention that GM and Ford create whole fleets of small and efficient cars for their European markets? If they didn't, they'd have been out of business there years ago.

The profusion of auto websites provide little relief. The world of "free" internet information is even more dependent on advertising revenue. At least papers know they also have a responsibility to the paying subscribers. 

Canadian reporters have no trouble asking why, if everything was so above board, former prime minister Brian Mulroney didn't just ask for a cheque instead of an envelope stuffed with cash.  They have no trouble asking why an MP's care giver may have been made to wash cars and shovel driveways.  That's just good critical journalism. We know that saying only good things about politicians might seem kind in the short run, but we also know it's not good for anyone in the long run.

The same discipline is essential when we report on businesses. In business journalism there is sometimes a temptation to bury the bad news. It may have seemed kind to the car companies to put the profitable SUVs in the editorial spotlight and refer to people who wanted efficient cars as "enviro-weenies." Yes, the land barges were profitable and smaller cars lower margin. But as Scotiabank economist and auto industry watcher Carlos Gomes said to me presciently a few years ago, "better low margin than no margin."

As we watch General Motors perform its slow-motion tumble down the cliff-side it is interesting to ponder what could have been done differently. If GM and Chrysler had been bullied by years of honest critical journalism into giving us the reliable, fuel efficient cars that most of us seem to want, maybe they, not Toyota and its ilk, would be technological leaders with the kind of cars consumer really want, ready to ride out this automotive storm. 

Don Pittis has reported on business for Radio Hong Kong, the BBC and the CBC. He is currently senior producer of CBC News Business.