The Audit Bureau of Circulations has demanded a retraction from marketing analyst Chris Moerdyk for saying the ABC’s integrity has taken a knock in the Media24 circulation debacle.
‘We demand that Mr Moerdyk retract his comments regarding the integrity and other unsubstantiated remarks regarding the workings of the ABC. The ABC reserves its right to take action against Mr Moerdyk, if it deems necessary,” said a media statement issued on Tuesday.
Moerdyk has shrugged off the ABC’s criticism, saying: ‘Their reaction has been hysterical and childish.”
In a column entitled, ‘Is Media24 the only culprit?”, published on www.bizcommunity.co.za last week, Moerdyk wrote that both Media24 and the ABC needed to restore their integrity following the circulation debacle that has seen 12 Media24 magazines lose their
certificates for inflating their numbers.
‘Seems to me, that along with Media24, when it comes to integrity having taken a tumble, this applies just as much to the Audit Bureau of Circulations,” wrote Moerdyk.
‘After all, while there was always a question mark about lie factors, margins of error and consistency of all other forms of media research, marketers, advertisers and media buyers have been working securely in the knowledge that ABC figures were utterly reliable, accurate and beyond reproach—
‘But, the point is that the ABC system is supposed to block this sort of thing before figures get published. And at least long before advertisers and marketers spend their budgets on magazines and newspapers.”
The ABC said it was ‘aghast” that Moerdyk ‘could display such a lack of understanding of how the ABC works and what it stands for.”
‘To have written such unconscionable and spurious comments without first obtaining the correct information from the ABC, is an insult to his profession,” the statement said.
‘Mr Moerdyk should be enquiring of Media24 and their auditors how this situation went undetected. Whilst the ABC makes every effort to ensure that the data it releases is accurate, it requires its members to do the same, and not submit data that is inaccurate, misleading or distorted.”
Moerdyk told The Media magazine that the ABC reaction was ‘quite remarkable”, saying he wanted to make the point that the ABC needed to consider how to deal with the perception that its data cannot be trusted anymore.
Read more about this in The Media magazine’s November issue.