NY Times and AP Portray
Shopping Season As So-So At Best
Washington Post and IBD report strong
shopping data which other papers leave out
By Ken Shepherd
Business & Media Institute
Jan. 6, 2006
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Getting an accurate portrayal of the 2005 Christmas shopping season
is like gathering information on that new Italian restaurant you’ve
heard about but want to try out for yourself. You want to get a wide
range of opinions before you make up your mind. If you rely on one
particularly bad review without having heard good reviews, you might
end up missing out.
    Unfortunately, the media lately have focused on one
review of the shopping season while leaving out more positive
assessments done by other researchers.
    In focusing exclusively on analysis from the
International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), the New York Times
and Associated Press (AP) left out analysis from ShopperTrak and
Visa USA which reported a strong shopping season, even though the
Times previously recorded ShopperTrak’s downbeat projections from
December.
    In his January 6 article, “Retailers Find Little to
Cheer,” New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro called an overall
3.2-percent sales increase in December 2005 for retailers a “decent,
if unspectacular” performance.
USA Today’s Money section printed a story the same day by Anne
D’Innocenzio of the Associated Press that similarly labeled the
sales figures, tabulated by the ICSC as “modest.” D’Innocenzio
called the 2005 Christmas shopping season “respectable overall …
disappointing for some of the nation’s most prominent merchants.”
    Investor’s Business Daily, however, reported that most
retailers surpassed their sales goals. “Retailers' same-store sales
overall rose 3.4% vs. a year earlier, beating analysts' estimates of
a 3.1% gain,” reported IBD’s
Marilyn Much in the January 6 paper, citing Ken Perkins of
research firm Retail Metrics. Much added that “Sixty-four percent of
the firms tracked in Retail Metrics' index beat views, while only
36% fell short. Typically, 55% beat estimates and 42% fall short.”
    The same day, the
Washington Post’s Ylan Qui chronicled the 3.2-percent increase
cited in the Times and AP, but added that “Other industry groups
reported better numbers. Market-research firm ShopperTrak said total
retail sales grew 4.4 percent in December, compared with the same
month in 2004 … Meanwhile, Visa USA said charges on its credit and
debit cards rose 17.5 percent this holiday season over the same
period in 2004.”
    The AP and New York Times left ShopperTrak and Visa out
of their January 6 stories, although Barbaro relied on ShopperTrak’s
initial downbeat projections for the Christmas shopping season to
color his mid-December article, “Shopping
Crowds Seem Lighter at the Mall This Year.”
    “For December so far, customer traffic has fallen 3.3
percent and sales have dropped 9 percent, compared with 2004,
according to ShopperTrak, a market research firm that monitors
activity in thousands of mall-based stores,” chronicled the Times
reporter.
    Even with his pessimistic outlook, Barbaro closed his
article conceding that ShopperTrak’s co-founder Bill Martin
cautioned that “he was not worried about the health of the season.
The next 10 days, he said, ‘will make a big difference.’”
    Those next few days did make a difference, as
ShopperTrak reported in its January 4
press release. Said Martin of the 4.4-percent growth in
end-of-year sales, “we can look at December and see that it made a
strong showing in comparison to a very healthy December in 2004.”
    Martin’s ShopperTrak provides data that show the fact
of a strong economy, but reporting that fact doesn’t seem to be on
the media’s list of New Year’s resolutions.
    The Business & Media Institute has written previously about
the media’s skewed portrayal of the
2005 Christmas shopping season as well as the media’s “Top
Ten Economic Myths of 2005.”
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