Didn't Tesla sue Top Gear for basically the same thing? I recall that didn't turn out well for Tesla, though perhaps the fact that Top Gear is widely recognized as being entertainment not serious journalism had something to do with that.
I don't know if their seriousness played into it. My understanding is that the judge ruled, essentially, that Top Gear was correct when they spoke about the car having extremely limited range when driven on their race track and that no reasonable person would confuse range on a racetrack with regular driving.
(And IANAL, but the UK is somewhat infamous for its plaintiff-friendly libel laws.)
My impression was that the 'seriousness' came into play because they did not merely claim that the car had poor range on a track, but that it ran out of juice while they were testing it, which was not the case. Making untrue statements to make a true point about a limitation of the car was permissible since nobody reasonably expects anything else of Top Gear. I doubt a "serious" publication can get away with that sort of thing though.
I'm a fan of both Tesla and Top Gear, and Tesla's complaints about Top Gear always seemed a bit daft to me. That is mostly because of who Top Gear is though.
