RIP Dick Smith but Channelnews, WTF?

The collapse of electronics retailer Dick Smith is dreadful to watch, as 3000 staff prepare for unemployment. Without any doubt the vulture fund Anchorage Capital have a lot of explaining to do, having dressed the retailer up for a half billion float and then walking away with the loot.

But today’s EXCLUSIVE report in Channelnews, published by 4Square Media completely misrepresents the facts.

In the report, Channelnews pays out on former Dick Smith CEO Nick Aboud and former Marketing Manager Neil Merola, who the author accuses of lying. We hope the author has some evidence, as this is highly defamatory.

But it’s the ‘EXCLUSIVE FINANCIALS’ that caught our attention. Media reporting on the mistakes of other media is always a slippery slope, we are convinced anyone with too much time on their hands could and will find errors here at CX.

The Channelnews report says: “In the Six month (sic) to December Dick Smith lost $164M million before interest and tax as sales slumped 5.4 per cent to $200.1 million”.

In fact if the leaked financials are correct, the true number for sales for the six months to the end of 2015 is $615 million. The $200 million reference is for the December monthly sales. Losing $164 million is terrible of course.

Channelnews is known for something of a bias towards some retailers and distributors – it currently seems to be very positive towards Harvey Norman.

4Square Media publisher David Richards had some trouble with that annoying Media Watch mob at the ABC a while back.

Probably time for CX to retreat on  this one, we just wanted to point out the obvious error with the Dick Smith ‘Exclusive’.