alt Hacker NewsTesla has a marketing department. It just refuses to talk to anyone except to talk at journalists...and journalists are so desperate to get quotes, they'll put up with it.
When Tesla started with the "no marketing department" nonsense, the press should have just stopped quoting them or covering them. Especially given that half the things Musk says are blatant lies.
One of the interesting things you start seeing and then can't stop seeing is "CEO says" journalism, where the whole article is about the CEO saying something and that's newsworthy and there's no real analysis of it or no looking at the track record of the CEO. Just stenography.
It's not limited to this one company, they'll do it with any company that's newsworthy or has a CEO who will generate clicks for their article.