(Thumbnail Image: Toyota)

"The officer pulled alongside the speeding car, giving instructions over his P.A.  'When I was getting up to the car, when I saw him, I could smell the brakes.  I saw his brake lights coming on.' 'I was standing on the pedal.  I was standing on the brake pedal.'" (ABC)

During a week in which Toyota is trying to quell concerns about runaway vehicles, yet another incident with a Toyota vehicle has garnered national headlines.  But are the media running away with the quick story, without really providing context and insight?  

We're taking a look at ABC, CNN, The Gawker, The San Diego Union-Tribune, CNBC, The Washington Post and MarketWatch.

We start with ABC, which recently ran an investigation with a college professor who says he was able to simulate what is happening with Toyota cars.  That professor told ABC's Chief Investigator Brian Ross, Toyota has an electronic problem.  But this week, ABC's David Muir reports, Toyota fired back.

"It was two weeks ago, professor Dave Gilbert of Southern Illinois University showed ABC's Brian Ross what could happen when he manipulated the wires that send signals from the gas pedal -- whoa! -- causing the car to suddenly accelerate. ...  Today, Toyota said that experiment was manipulated, and set out to refute it.  Saying Gilbert's scenario could not have happened in the real world, that Toyota could easily manipulate the same results -- and not only with a Toyota, but with several other cars too. All different models, all different makes."

The blog Gawker says ABC altered the video in its investigation.  CNN's Howard Kurtz gives his view.

"An ABC spokesman tells me that an editor replaced video of the tachometer while the car was actually moving because that shot was very shaky.  But it has now changed the video online to include the original footage and added an explanation.  ABC says the substitution didn't affect the results of the test drive but this was sloppy and potentially misleading."

But Gawker says, that one change calls the whole investigation into question.

"If it's true that the swapped shot actually took place while Gilbert was performing the same test he performed while Ross was driving, then we could conceivably be inclined to believe that this was a careless error rather than a deliberate attempt to deceive viewers by using the most damaging shot of the tachometer Ross had."

The San Diego Union-Tribune's Steve Schmidt says -- the Prius presents a new problem for Toyota. Heretofore, much of the accelerator attention was focused on two other models -- the Camry and Corolla.

"And it's apparently not the first time the car has been tied to the problem of sudden acceleration. My colleague Leslie Berestein writes that there have been 151 similar reports across the country. Many were filed before the Saylor crash brought the issue with Toyota vehicles to light."

But on CNBC, reporter Phil LeBeau puts the number of reports closer to 48.  And explains what Toyota is doing about the problem.

"The gas pedal is not part of a recall for sticky gas pedals, the floor mats however, are part of the recall -- remember that recall was late last year, Larry, in which Toyota was recalling a number of vehicles, a sizeable number of vehicles, removing the floor mats and then modifying the accelerator."

And The Washington Post's Frank Ahrens says -- while it is a bad day for Toyota,  he says, the media is playing a big role here too, by not investigating the incident beyond its attention-grabbing headline.

"Do you think this incident would have been as widely reported, or perhaps reported at all, if the runaway vehicle had been a Ford Focus or a Chevy Malibu? Because it's a Toyota Prius, the media jump on the story. I'm not blaming the media; I'm just saying this is another element of potentially overweight data that our brains are using to create a pattern, a picture, about Toyota."

Marketwatch's Steve Kerch goes one step further.  Asking if the media is playing a watchdog role, or simply letting interest in a potentially dramatic story drive its coverage.

"This, though, has become the American Way, ever since O.J. meandered down a California freeway in his Ford Bronco. The cable networks now salivate over any sort of highway chase or high-speed thriller, hoping they have the next classic road drama -- and, though they won't admit it, hoping even harder it is the next road disaster -- live and in person."

So what do you think?  Is the media missing the real story by chasing runaway cars?   Or is it simply offering more proof that Toyota needs to step up and address its problems?

Writer: Newsy Staff

Producer: Newsy Staff