Did Australian Media set Click Frenzy up to fail?

At the close of Click Frenzy 2012, a barrage of negative media coverage of the event has ensured there will be no more Cyber Monday type shopping events for Australia in the foreseeable future.

The media had been hyping it up for weeks as the biggest sale of the year. But when Click Frenzy’s website crashed under the strain of two million users last night, Fairfax Media and News.com.au were quick to distance themselves from all that hype when criticism of Click Frenzy began pouring in on social media. One could argue that the media giants had set Click Frenzy up to fail. But the media wouldn’t do anything as underhanded as that, would they?

Within an hour of the official launch at 7pm AEDT, criticism of Click Frenzy began appearing on News.com.au and Fairfax news sites. Although no-one can fault them for reporting on what was a genuine failure by the organisers of Click Frenzy to adequately prepare for the event. Was it really necessary to continue the coverage through the night and well into the next day? At last count, News.com.au had published 28 articles in the past 24 hours and over at Fairfax they have covered the story no less than 12 times.

With so many negative stories appearing in the press and online, I could be forgiven for thinking that our leading media organisations have been engaged in a campaign to kill off the frenzy of reckless spending they helped to create. Why would they do that you may ask? Simple. To cover their collective asses.

For reasons I cannot explain, we are still willing to put our faith in the news media to deliver fair and balanced reporting. So when our leading news sites started showing support for Click Frenzy a couple of weeks ago, most of us had no reservations about marking the date in our calendars. We foolishly assumed the media had asked organisers of the event all the hard questions and contacted retailers before giving the story such a positive spin.

Since withdrawing their support for Click Frenzy, the media have since revealed all the details they conveniently neglected to tell us about prior to the event, such as the high costs imposed on retailers who signed-up to participate. Instead, they openly criticised those retailers who decided to go it alone and run their own one day sale events.

Well at least the past 24 hours has settled any suggestion Fairfax Media and News Corp were in partnership with the organisers of Click Frenzy. With all the positive media coverage leading up to the event, I did wonder about that. Happy to conclude that the media in this country still has some shred of integrity left.