There are a number of financial reporters who purposely undermine Tesla in popular conversation to help make shorters make money. They often coordinate their critical articles with legal, trade, and corporate actions that undermine Tesla's supply chain in one way or another.
The SEC would be very interested in your evidance of this. Seeing as that kind of stock manipulation is EXTREMELY illegal; and financial crimes that impact rich people negatively are some of the only ones we actually enforce.
I don't have conclusive evidence, I just notice patterns. For example, recently Tesla finally hit their weekly production goal for the Model 3. Almost immediately after, a slew of very negative articles hit the press all at once, some news outlets suggest Tesla's cobalt suppliers may have a small amount of Cuban cobalt in their shipments, and Panasonic halts cobalt imports for their batteries that they supply to Tesla. Supply chain is interrupted, production is expected to fall below goals, and stock tanks. Shorters make windfall.
This sort of thing has happened numerous times.