Readers take sides on Wal-Mart TV expose - Dateline NBC television program report on Wal-Mart's alleged wage discrimination - Buyers & Sellers - Column

Discount Store News, April 5, 1993 by Don Longo

News item: A George Polk Award for excellence in journalism in the National Television Reporting category was awarded to Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz, the two NBC-TV news staffers who directed the "Dateline NBC" program's controversial report on Wal-Mart's Buy America program (see DSN, Jan. 18, page 1). The George Polk Awards, established in 1949, are presented annually in a variety of print, radio and TV categories.

News item: NBC accepted the resignations of "Dateline" executive producer Jeff Diamond, senior producer David Rummel and Robert Read, producer of a segment questioning the safety of some General Motors trucks. NBC News president Michael Gartner, who first defended the GM story that used rigged crashes to ignite explosions on two test trucks used in a crash demonstration, resigned March 2.

The first news item really makes me cringe when I think about the state of TV news reporting. As I said in an earlier column, the report was unfair and biased against Wal-Mart. I'm incredulous that such a report would win an award. The second item more accurately illustrates the extent to which some TV news programs will go to hype a story. In my view, the fake crashes were only a small step beyond the images of burned bodies shown on-camera to a stunned Wal-Mart ceo David Glass, who was somehow supposed to be responsible for the fire that destroyed a factory in Bangladesh, which supposedly made clothes for Wal-Mart.

As with my comments on a TV news program's attack on Kmart for alleged age discrimination, my column on Wal-Mart's response to the sleazoid attack elicited several phone calls and letters from readers.

Some felt it was high time Wal-Mart took a fall for a long-time series of business practices that destroyed small businesses across America. Others felt that my defense of Wal-Mart was hardly necessary since "they're big boys and can take care of themselves." "They simply got caught with their foot in their mouth," wrote one reader.

On the other hand, others got the impression that I was too harsh on Wal-Mart, taking them to task for handling poorly the firestorm of bad publicity as articles about the "Dateline" program appeared in newspapers across the country. "It seems to me . . . that Wal-Mart is about as ethical and fair play an organization as we have done business with, and I measure this against our customers, most of them being major retailers, supermarkets and hardware/housewares distributors in the country," wrote the president of one company doing business with Wal-Mart for 18 years. He felt that my suggestion that Wal-Mart be less adversarial in its press relations was way beyond "the privilege of the free press."

Maybe he's right, but I'm still convinced that the better way to handle bad news is to be upfront about it, state company policy, investigate the charges seriously, and report back to the public--and the press--with the results of that investigation.