Entry #3 | Slanted Reporting

Hello again. I hope this blog post finds everyone safe and well. I was digitally surfing on social media in a few spare moments today and noticed a sensationalized headline that I felt could use some discussion. Some of you may feel this treads into politics but I would counter that it is more about something so mundane as pizza and football being politicized. Stay with me though, we can come away as more informed people than when we started. The article was posted on The Hill, which is a news organization that promotes itself as being nonpartisan though I have often questioned this with some of the stories I see posted by this organization. The published article, "Papa John’s: NFL anthem protests are hurting pizza sales" caught my attention immediately.

Granted there is a lot of context involved in this topic but any article by a reporter is expected to stand, and be judged, on its own. This article is seriously lacking any type of reporting, in my opinion. The article opens with a partial quotation of John Schnatter's (CEO) statement about the NFL hurting their sales. The article then transitions to Mr. Schnatter admitting that the company has removed advertising. This is an obvious disconnect to me, they advertise less, get lower sales and correlate the decrease in sales to the NFL. Maybe it's just me but this does not appear to be a rational conclusion. Moving on though, the article then transitions to the President's actions in the past as well as some of the NFL players' actions, seemingly to imply a causation/effect type scenario, I suppose.



A little research turned up that Fortune Magazine reported that Mr. Schnatter's statement was made in response to what sounds to have been an investor meeting which included business forecasts being restated with lower revised same-store sales expectations for the rest of 2017. This statement and the revised forecast are being reported as the probable reason for the 12% drop in their share price by mid-day today. However, Papa John's released their 3rd quarter results on September 25, 2017 so this is not really new information. Review of the 3rd quarter results show that a meeting was scheduled for today, November 1, 2017, with investors. Within this same report the company itemized 15 risks to their forward-looking statements, none of which contain any mention of the NFL and the current national debate surrounding it. This leaves me with the impression of some irresponsible, opportunistic scapegoating by the CEO.

A relatively quick and cursory search shows that other advertisers have not reported sales declines directly attributed to the current national debate surrounding the NFL. In terms of public relations, Nike still appears to be the one single company that unequivocally issued a statement in support of the players. Nike's 3rd quarter earnings released in September also were down but it was reported to be due more to increased competition and any potential impacts from the NFL debate being unknown currently. The NY Times reported that Under-Armour, Ford, Hyundai, Bose and Anheuser-Busch have all released statements a bit more ambiguous in support of both sides of the debate. Again, a quick cursory search shows none of these companies currently report sales declines that can be, or are being, directly attributed to the current NFL debate.


So in conclusion, and personally speaking, I tend to agree with Alex Putterman in his article, "Papa John's pulls some of its NFL advertising, says player protests are causing decline in sales" regarding the current situation. There are better pizza competitors in the market and Papa John's has never been an option I would personally consider. I can also say that personally, this type of predatory behavior by a business leader adds another reason to not support businesses such as this. Any thoughts on this?