I don't really understand why anyone thinks Tesla simply begging for money would work

This has nothing to do with logic. There's a difference between thinking this would work versus wanting to paint a picture of Tesla being desperate. It doesn't have to be believable or even accurate for the story to have impact (and a steady stream of tiny impacts is what they are going for when you look at the volume of tweets on some of these "analysts" twitter feeds)

There was a comment that rebate/incentive/cashback agreements with OEMs is standard industry practice. So Tesla (re)negotiating the form of that rebate would be standard business. So either reporters don't understand business, or are intentionally misleading