After getting back home from my long Thanksgiving weekend in Arkansas, I sat down to see if I missed any news. The last news report I paid attention to was on Friday of last week. The report was that Black Friday was a good day for retail. Then on Saturday Wal-Mart lowered its sales forecast from 2 to 4 percent down to .7 percent. Historically, a slow November is not good, but December sales can make up for it. Meanwhile other weekend retail news is good. But I want to prove a point about the media bias against Wal-Mart.
Take a look at this CBS News article: Wal-Mart casts pall over holiday sales.
Anecdotal evidence of crowded stores at the start of the holiday shopping season wasn't backed up with promising retail numbers, as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cut its November sales forecast by more than half.
Shares of the world's largest retailer are likely to come under pressure later Monday, after the company threw a shadow over preliminary holiday retail data when it cut its estimates on Saturday.
Both the headline and lead paragraphs are misleading; this past weekend wasn't bad. In fact, the same article just a few paragraphs down has this:
MasterCard International said it saw an increase in transaction volume, as transactions processed over its Banknet global telecommunications network increased 9.29 percent on year for the weekend through Saturday night.
MasterCard processed 64.2 million credit authorizations over its Banknet telecommunications network this year, as compared to 58.7 million for the same period in 2003.
CBS News took the data, which presents very positive news in some areas and turned it into a "Wal-Mart is getting theirs" story. CBS wasn't the only organization to do so. A quick look at Google News provided a plethora of anti-Wal-Mart headlines. The fairest headline and story belonged to the Dallas Morning News with Stores report mixed results over holiday weekend. While the most biased headlines belonged to CBS News, mentioned above, and the Financial Times with a story titled "Fears over recovery as Wal-Mart sales stall, as if Wal-Mart controls the world's retail recovery.
Here are some points these stories that should be taken into consideration:
- November isn't over
- U.S. retailers haven't reported their same-store sales figures for the month of November, which is due this Thursday
- There are other retailers besides Wal-Mart
- December numbers may override any slow-down from November
This is another case of the glass being half-empty or half-full, depending on how it's reported. Just breeze through the list of headlines (opens in new window and is big) and see that some stories are positive and some are clearly Wal-Mart bashing.
The graphic in this article links to a screenshot of Google News headlines. If you have IE or Firefox set to auto-size graphics, you will have to click the Expand button after opening–it's a huge graphic. Notice the contradictory headlines. Was Black Thursday a good day or a bad day? I guess it depends on if you want to bash Wal-Mart or not.
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