Here's why you can't buy the News Journal at Wal-Mart

I might understand it if Wal-Mart said I ought to fire Mark because what he said wasn’t accurate. But that isn’t the case. Mark accurately reported that there are 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees in a health-care program that is costing Georgia taxpayers nearly $10 million a year.

Shouldn’t we talk about that? —Randy HammerHere’s why you can’t buy the News Journal at Wal-Mart (Pensacola News Journal)

13 thoughts on “Here's why you can't buy the News Journal at Wal-Mart

  1. Lou, I wouldn’t say that my respect for everyone who works at Wal-Mart has been affected by the decisions of a group of managers who made a knee jerk decision (that they later reversed). While a good columnist should focus on multiple sides of an issue, a columnist is permitted to present an opinion. And, in a society with a free press, we should embrace with joy the fact that our citizens have the right to disagree with each other and with the politicians in power. O’Brien wasn’t writing an investigative report; instead, he refers to a book by Thomas Friedman, and supplies a local angle to those claims.

    And even if you disagree with the columnist, you should rejoice that the editor of the News Journal put the principle of the freedom of the press over the money his paper stood to lose.

    Someday, Lou, if you write a column that tells the truth but makes a powerful person angry, you’ll hope that you have an editor who’s willing to stick up for you against bullies.

  2. Walmart DOES have decent benefits. I mean if my dad has to pay into it, thats pretty damn good. And actually, no, it would have been caught, even the onocologist said that he could have been dead before it was actually caught.

    and pro-union actually does justify it, because Wal-Mart has a right to deny ANY newspaper being sold in its stores–pro or anti-union.

    either way, the point is the journalist should have gotten the facts from walmart itsself, not just from every other source BUT walmart, which in my opinion he did. He just went to other sources, but claims to go to Wal-Mart.

    My respect for journalism, like i said, among other things, has seriously gone down. Newswriting and Media Lab should be fun. (ok, that last part was saracasm.)

  3. Even if it was “pro-union”, would that justify Walmart’s pulling of the newspaper? Personally, I don’t want to patronize an establishment that doesn’t allow dissenting voices. Why are unions so bad? They gave us a lot of what we have today. 40 hour week, benefits, and safety regulations.

    The fact is, Walmart is getting a fantastic deal and they’re screwing everybody. Not only do they get state subsidies for “bringing jobs” to the area, they avoid paying for health insurance for the majority of their employees, and pay a substandard wage. They’re making money hand over fist by stepping on the backs of the people they supposedly served. It’s great that Lou’s dad is okay, but if Walmart had decent benefits, wouldn’t Lou’s dad’s cancer have been caught much earlier?

  4. Talked to my dad today–he pays into his health insurance, so its NOT a corporate thing. That paper down in Florida was more than likely a pro-union paper, which is why it got pulled.

  5. I don’t think individual Wal-Marts would be able to make the decision of what benefits to pay their employees. That would probably be a corporate decision. And, of course, an employee who’s married to someone who gets coverage elsewhere could opt out of Wal-Mart’s healthcare plans.

    Here’s an article from the Boston Globe that says Senator Kennedy and Corzine (both Democrats) are among those saying that Wal-Mart should do more.

    More than 600,000 of Wal-Mart’s 1.26 million US workers get benefits from government programs or through a spouse’s employer, the lawmakers said.

    ”This is the ultimate in turning your back on responsibility to society,” Corzine said. ”The numbers are staggering.”

    The article concludes with a quotation from a Wal-Mart spokesperson, so this brief article isn’t an unfair hatchet job.

    http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/06/23/wal_marts_healthcare_policy_rapped/

  6. That was the point behind my story.

    Just because one Walmart (Georgia/Florida) doesn’t pay fully into the health care doesn’t mean another doesn’t. My dad doesn’t complain about his health insurance, heck Walmart pays for all of his eyes, dental, etc.–ive never heard him say anything like “well, the taxpayers are paying for this.” Usually he’ll show me his pay stub and say “this is how much they take out for my health insurance.”

    If anything, my mom’s and other “disabled” people should be the ones people gripe about. My mom has no knee caps, and a bad back, and she doesn’t work. Gripe about that!

    I am not saying censorship is right, I disagree with Wal-Marts choice to get arid of that newspaper–but I highly doubt that the corporate offices made at that decision.

    I don’t know, to me, its either we pay less for our stuff and they use our tax money, or we pay more for our stuff but the employees get health insurance. Persoanlly, I’d rather pay less for my stuff.

  7. I dont think its a matter of why isn’t his employer footing the bill so much as it is, why is it that only negative news comes out, and people only look at that negative side.

    I mean yes, that was in florida and georgia that the taxpayers were paying out the bill, but is that the case in PA. I personally don’t know, because my stepfather never told me. All I know is that man was sick, he got the treatment. His fellow employees even raised money for the family–numerous times. Yeah, Wal-Mart may be a huge corporation, but at least it’s one that people can do things like that.

    I mean I persoanlly don’t care–even when I did have a job and was paying taxes–that some of my money went to medcare and stuff like that for people that work at Wal-Mart, or don’t have a job–because at least their getting health care. I think my respect for journalism, among other things to be truthful, just got lowered a little.

  8. Statistics and analyses of single case studies are both kinds of truth. You need the statistics in order to help determine whether a particular case study is representative or unusual. If you make a law, it’s got to apply to everyone, not just the few people whose case studies you’ve been able to examine in depth.

    I really blogged this because of the newspaper connection. I do think the public deserves to know if Wal-Mart refuses to sell publications that publish unflattering stories about Wal-Mart. The real problem comes when some small paper, which stands to lose advertising and circulation money of Wal-Mart refuses to support it, caves in and spikes a bad story about Wal-Mart, or generates a good story about Wal-Mart, simply for the sake of preserving the financial relationship.

    Regarding health care… it is only human and decent for societies to care for their own members. I don’t mind that my tax dollars pays for the healthcare of somebody who can’t find work, or who is too sick to work. But Wal-Mart is a huge corporation — Sam Walton was the richest man in America until he divided up his fortune among his children. Other companies pay for the healthcare provided to their employees… why shouldn’t Wal-Mart? Why should someone who works at one of the stores Wal-Mart is competing with have to pay for his or her own benefits, and then also (through taxes) support somebody who works at Wal-Mart?

    This isn’t a matter of letting your stepfather go untreated, it’s a question of why isn’t his employer footing the bill? (Of course, if Wal-Mart does start paying better benefits, the’ll have to raise their prices.)

  9. Journalists do have an obligation to tell the whole story, and that means sometimes they have to ask questions that make people uncomfortable. But I’m not sure it’s defensible to say that “only negative news comes out”. It may seem that way, in general, because nobody would read a headline like “School Bus Brings Children Home Safely” or “Former Postal Worker Sends Home-made Brownies to Former Co-Workers.” But the issue here is that a local Wal-Mart manager refused to sell copies of a newspaper that contained an article that presented Wal-Mart in a bad light.

    That’s censorship, and people should know about it.

    Note: the decision of this one local manager shouldn’t be projected onto Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters.

  10. OK, Another rant.

    My step-father works at Wal-Mart at nights, from 9:30pm to 6:30-7:00 am. If it wasn’t for the taxpayers, we would have never found out that he had cancer.

    As Dr. Jerz knows, that’s a touchy subject for me. Sitting here right, looking back on what happened (which I’ll post in a moment), tears are starting to swell in my eyes.

    Basically, my half brother and I went to work with my dad one bright and sunny day. We were in the back, eating lunch and I was reading the newspaper. You see, even in middle school-which for this was when this had happened, I was very into politics and the world around me, anyways..my brother went to go find my dad to remind him that Steven (my little brother, he was about 10-11 at the time) needed a new jockstrap and mouth guard for his peewee football practice. The next I know, Steven comes running back to me, tears in his eyes. He buries his head into my chest. I ask him what’s wrong.

    “Dad hit his head on a TV that he was trying to get down. He had to go to the hospital because he got knocked out. Their calling mom.”

    You see my little brother is VERY attached to his dad, as am I. My stepdad, Joe, has been there for me more than my own dad. So we sat and waited for my mom. The next thing we know, we’re in a car with our grandfather going to Jeanette Memorial Hospital to make sure our father is ok.

    We wait…and we wait..to make a long story short, the doctor comes out and says that our dad will be alright, but that he thinks our dad might have cancer. That sent my world into a downward spiral, and Steven didn’t even know what to do–because every time he heard the word “cancer” in school, it was always preceded or followed by “death”. This scared him.

    Luckily, our father is alive and well, but he wouldn’t be if it werent for the taxpayers of Pennsylvania.

    Sure, the taxpayers might pay into his health insurance–but in the end isn’t worth it? I mean it saved one life–and in the end anyways, as I discoverd by asking him–he pays into the health insurance too, since technically he is a taxpayer.

    I am not saying that the man who wrote the article was wrong to write–no, it was a story that should have been told. I am also not saying Wal-Mart is right or wrong in getting a rid of the newspaper–their could have been other reasons. What I am saying is, get the whole story. Don’t get what a study says, mainly because those ar done just to get statistics, not true-to-life stories about people. Get the WHOLE truth!

  11. My favorite line Mr. Hammer wrote:

    “When we stop listening to people on the other side of the fence, when we try to silence and even punish people for thinking differently than we do and raising facts and figures we don’t like, well, we won’t be red, white and blue anymore.”
    -Randy Hammer, Pensacola News Journal

    People pull that “un-American” thing with me all the time. But, really the only “un-American” thing is to stifle justice and progress. People should matter more than gaining or saving a buck. I think this situation greatly proves that this particular scenario isn’t doing anyone justice.

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