Now, I'm not going to tell those inclined to shop at Wal-Mart to stop, but breathe an ill-word about Wal-Mart in the media and you risk this:
"I like Wal-Mart prices the same as the next shopper, but there's a downside, too. Many Wal-Mart employees lack the fringe benefits and insurance that makes the difference between existence and a good quality of life. Yet, we customers pay a surcharge from a different pocket — subsidizing health care for Wal-Mart employees who can't afford it."
Mark then described how Friedman's book pointed out that more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees are in a Georgia health-care program, which costs the state's taxpayers nearly $10 million a year. Mark also pointed out that a New York Times report found that 31 percent of the patients at a North Carolina hospital were Wal-Mart employees on Medicaid.
Mark's column really wasn't about Mr. Walton's store, but about Pensacola and how we're becoming a Wal-Mart kind of town, "cheap and comfy on the surface, lots of unhappiness and hidden costs underneath."
I'm also not going to say Wal-Mart can't, and doesn't, do some good things. And those things should be supported. Nothing is as black and white as it appears. Just like the column implies--surface views can be deceiving. However, and Wal-Mart's certainly within their rights to do this, they can make life more difficult for those that seek to report--accurately--what is going on, particularly in Wal-Mart's culture. It's also why, I'm sure, there's many a media outlet who won't write a remotely-negative Wal-Mart story because they've blurred editorial with advertising, and money's going to win out over truth.
UPDATE: Wal-Mart, apparently, has reversed itself and will allow the newspaper back into its store there.
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