Not every misleading EV story is a lobby group spinning numbers. Sometimes it's simpler: a journalist takes a company's press release, tidies it up, and publishes it as news without checking a single claim themselves. It's called "churnalism," and it's worth knowing how to spot.

The case in point: a new fast EV charger opened in Cockburn, Perth, owned by a private businessman rather than a charging network. The technical specs check out. Two other claims are worth a closer look.

Claim one: "the first of its kind... anywhere in Australia." This exact sentence appears, close to word-for-word, across at least three separate outlets, one press release, reprinted three times, with no sign anyone checked it.

Claim two: "250,000 litres of annual diesel reduction", the owner's own guess at what the charger might displace, reported as plain fact with no caveat that it's a prediction.

The bottom line: when a story includes a superlative like "first" or "groundbreaking," or a company's own projection dressed up as a result, that's the moment to ask who actually said it first, and whether anyone checked.