Categories: OLD Media Moves

Retail coverage mistakes this Christmas season

The Big Picture blog noted that with retail sales lackluster this shopping season, the coverage was even more disappointing.

It wrote, “There were all too many column inches that merely repeated Industry press releases; At the same time, there was a surprising dearth of skepticism. Otherwise respectable media morphed into mere dictation machines. Retail reporting took on the air of relentless cheerleading, as shopping became a competitive sport.

“One would imagine that breathless accounts of 19% year-over-year gains (wrong again), combined with a god-awful track record of hype and inaccurate forecasts from the same specific industry sources would raise a few eyebrows amongst the more senior editors. That apparently happened rather infrequently.

“Some of the more egregious errors we witnessed were:

• Surveys of consumers (NRF) expected shopping budgets were reported as actual retail sales;

• Foot traffic (Shopper-trac) was extrapolated to actual sales reciepts; This was reported (for the most part) w/o qualifying the estimated nature of this calculation;

• Credit card gains were reported as total sales gains;

• The distinction between Mall Stores, Discounters, and Specialty stores numbers were often left ambiguous. Relative size of these different retail outlets was typically omitted;

“Given the obvious agendas that various industry trade groups have in promoting a ‘feel good shopping environment,’ one would have hoped that there would be more fact checking and verification, and less stenography. Apparently, fact checking is a decreasingly important priority.”

Read more here.

Recent Posts

Dynamo hires former Business Insider executive editor Harrington

Former Business Insider executive editor Rebecca Harrington has been hired by Dynamo to be its…

1 day ago

Bloomberg TV hires Kerubo as desk producer

Bloomberg Television has hired Brenda Kerubo as a desk producer in London. She will be covering Europe's…

1 day ago

Jittery CNBC staff reassured by new boss

In a meeting at CNBC headquarters Thursday afternoon, incoming boss Mark Lazarus presented a bullish…

1 day ago

Making business news accessible to a wider audience

Ritika Gupta, the BBC's North American business correspondent, was interviewed by Global Woman magazine about…

1 day ago

Rest of World hires Lo as China reporter

Rest of World has hired Kinling Lo as a China reporter. Lo was previously a…

1 day ago

Bloomberg rises to No. 7 biz news website

Bloomberg News saw strong unique visitor growth to its website in October, passing Fox Business…

1 day ago