Maven: Weather-Related Ridiculousness

Speaking of heat stroke, in the middle of the alphabet, MarketWatch was telling us this in a headline: "Blazing temperatures damage July retail sales."

Remember that lead about people rushing out to shop for summer clothes. Here's MarketWatch: "Scorching temperatures throughout much of the country kept consumers indoors in the final weeks of July, but strength in the first two weeks helped many of the biggest retailers turn in robust sales."

Wait, does L come before M? Whoops. Because in the lead to its article, "Retail Sales Better Than Expected," the Los Angeles Times had something else altogether: "Retailers logged sales that were generally better than expected in July as temperatures sizzled and shoppers picked up summertime bargains while cooling themselves in malls."

Got that? It wasn't the cool clothes, but the cool malls.

Meanwhile, over by Z, The Washington Post reported that the new guys at Six Flags (SIX Quote), who had been critical of old management's way of blaming the weather every which way for this and that, spent a conference call citing "all manner of meteorological phenomena while discussing the companies second-quarter loss. Rains flooded the East Coast. A heat wave engulfed Dallas and Oklahoma City, which had 15 consecutive days of three-digit temperatures."

Now that we know our ABCs. ... Look, without divine intervention, management will never stop blaming the weather for bad results. (It's interesting, isn't it, that management less frequently credits the weather for better results.) But it is the media's job not to parrot management's claims.

Bad stenographers, bad!

That's why I'm giving out the dreaded Business Press Maven "Back of the Hand" award to half of the business reporters out there this week. And I'll give my coveted "Nod of Approval" to a goofy little segment on CNBC's "Power Lunch."