And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly revealed facts.

The "damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving cars" wasn't caused solely by this one incident.

"A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on."

It's not a lie to say cigarettes kill people by lung cancer, even if it's later proven that one smoker who died in some study actually got lung cancer from a different cause.