December 31, 2013

The 2013 Christmas shopping season ended badly for many parties. Consumers, e-tailers and parcel carriers all wrestled with a late rush in orders that overwhelmed the system. But multiple media outlets — ABC, CBS and NBC chief among them — got it wrong in reporting, without proper facts, that UPS and FedEx were responsible for, in essence, ruining the Christmas for a multitude of families. False reporting was so widespread that even The Wall Street Journal fell for it and misplaced responsibility for those late deliveries.

The media overlooked the facts. Because the three parcel delivery outlets — UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service, which control 95 percent of the market — make their shipping data available to the public, we know they handled a huge spike in volume in the week leading up to Christmas. Some 73 million parcels were delivered on Dec. 24 alone, compared to 37 million on a normal day…