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Wal-mart's Wikipedia War
An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust is running an article which claims that lobbyists for Wal-mart have successfully waged a war against a fair viewpoint on Wikipedia's Wal-mart page. From the article: "Although Wikipedia maintains a 'Neutral Point of View' (NPOV) policy, the Wal-mart page is highly biased. Additionally, all criticism has, contrary to policy, practice, and the general opinion of those concerned, been moved to a Debates Over Wal-mart section. Even that page has noticeable resistance to negative points of view about Wal-mart."
In theory the wikipedia idea (many minds, many eyes, perhaps a voting mechanism) should work and result in articles which are fairly close to the state of human (knowledge * belief). And it did seem to be working for a while.
But in reality, people who are paid money to do something can spend far more time and effort than those who cotribute out of ego or community spirit. So it is not surprising to me that big entities are throwing a few bucks to their marketing firms to influence the web information flow. And marketing interns don't cost all that much, either: they are typically paid $15/hour and billed at $75. Peanuts compared to real marketing and advertising expenses.
I strongly suspect we are seeing the same thing on the political blogs. Except for those few that have a very large readership that takes self-policing seriouisly (e.g. DailyKos), I suspect that 20-30% of the comments on the key political blogs are being posted by paid agents. And of those comments, many flame-starters and most thread-redirectors are coming from those agents.
I think the "mass mind of humanity" idea ain't gonna work.
sPh
Since Wal-Mart is so heavily in bed with China, is it any wonder? They're learning from the pros. Of course they are successful and their business model is indeed efficient. They put a lot of people to work and they offer the average consumer decent prices on all the things they want, from groceries to TVs. Unfortunately, they've taken this beyond the limit of decency.
They would point out the prosperity they bring to areas where they build stores, but they fail to mention the manufacturing jobs they eliminate in this country when they import cheap Chinese merchandise, thereby converting a lot of good-paying jobs into low-paying jobs and sucking money out of the tax base and Social Security.
Their commercials would have you believe that their staff is always friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable, when this is the furthest thing from the truth. I have been to a Wal-Mart in 10 different states and I've yet to find a store that wasn't chaotic, unkempt, and whose staff wasn't lacking decent social skills. I've become so fed up with them that I do not shop there, prefering Target, even when I could save money.
They don't want the truth to come out, to tarnish Sam Walton's reputation with reality. The fact is, these people who fanatically support Wal-Mart are to retail what Scientology is to religon (go ahead Cruise, sue me!). Wal-Mart is best described as the Microsoft of retail outlets, and it shows in the way they handle employee compensation and benefits, not to mention unionization. They are so profit-centric now that they don't care who they crush along the way.
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It depends upon what you call, "fair and balanced".
A news organization's purpose is to inform, not to proffer an opinion. In the area of informing, NPR does better than Fox. For example, more than 60% of Fox News listeners thought the US found WMD's in Iraq, less than 20% of NPR's listeners thought the same. Since Washington has admitted that no WMDs were found, which news organization did a better job of informing its listeners?
And that's typically the other side of the fence, right? "If you don't like it, don't go there."
Now, admittedly, I haven't done my research to answer a singular Slashdot comment in such a way that would both blow and change your mind about Wal-Mart. I can give you, however, an anecdote that is less emotion and what I know about where I live. Take it however you like, but I assure you that I'm not just making this up as I go along:
I live in a relatively small Southern town (~20K in population) that was built around and experienced growth largely through the textile and manufacturing industries. It is populated largely by high school graduates and dropouts who were able to work effectively as blue-collar laborers, but not much more. This has been going on for a couple of generations. When Wal-Mart left its former home in our town, moving to a new location to house its new SuperCenter, the business remaining in the strip mall of its past home eventually all went out of business (6-9 retail establishments, including grocery store, drug store, clothing store and 1-2 shoe stores, others), save for maybe one. That in itself is not "evil," nor terribly surprising.
But we know what happened to American manufacturing and textiles: they were offsourced. Plant after plant switched hands, and switched hands, and now the vast majority of them have shut down. Yes, you could say "well, that's the town's fault for building itself around manufacturing," but that'd be about as emotive as saying "Wal-Mart is evil because of this or this alleged offense," right? So we won't say that.
Now, we have lots and lots of blue-collar workers who are looking around for a job, used to being machine operators or other types of grunt workers with little education. But lo and behold, we have a Wal-Mart SuperCenter, and not only that, but a Wal-Mart regional distribution center, too. It's either one of those two places, some fast-food or other retail store, or a crapshoot application to the city government which will likely have 3-5 dozen applicants with similar qualifications, if not more.
Where do you think they go?
These are still people, taking the provider role to bring money home to keep the cars running, to keep food and clothes for the kids, and etc. In towns like mine? Where Wal-Mart makes up a significant percentage of employment opportunities for the people that relied on a section of the economy that largely doesn't exist anymore? It's -very- important not to poo-poo allegations like the ones that have been mentioned in previous comments and in Wikipedia. You're right in that they -should- be able to leave, and then magically pick up a job somewhere else. But for blue-collar workers that can't readily afford to take the time away or pay the tuition for community college classes or even a GED course...leaving is an ideal, and not so much a viable option.
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
As for myself, I'd give just about anything to get a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the middle of the Silicon Valley area. When I think that strawberries from Watsonville (an hour from here) cost less in Tennessee at a WMSC than they do locally at Albertsons, it becomes immediately obvious how badly the general public is getting screwed by these other chain stores. Hint: there are more Albertsons stores (2500) than WM Supercenters (2000), therefore Albertsons has MORE buying power and should be able to charge LESS for everything. So why do I pay, on average, half again more for groceries than folks at WM Supercenters in similarly expensive metro areas? I'll tell you what it isn't. It isn't the cost of employees. They make up a tiny fraction of the overhead of running a store.
The answer is corporate greed... and on the grand scale, Wal-Mart shows less corporate greed than most other companies. This is why their stock isn't doing much in spite of huge total revenue. They're not perfect, but they're a heck of a lot better than most of the alternatives. When I can buy a COLD soft drink in a vending machine outside a Wal-Mart for about what it costs to buy it in a twelve pack at Albertsons or Target, somebody is getting greedy, and it isn't Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is a good example of how to run a business, on the whole. Yes, they could be better about benefits, but to their credit, they are steadily working on adding things like clinics to the stores in an effort to reduce their health care costs so that they CAN improve the benefits they offer to their employees without it breaking the bank. And they are already better than most small, non-chain employers; 49% of businesses with under 100 employees don't offer any insurance at all according to a recent government survey.
And FWIW, everyone I've asked who has worked at Wal-Mart said that they had health insurance. Every Single One. Not everyone is eligible, granted, but most of the ineligible are also people who probably should be looking for jobs that require less physical robustness anyway, and thus really shouldn't even attempt to work at Wal-Mart.
So to the critics, spare us the bleeding heart crap. Wal-Mart fills an important public need, driving ludicrous costs down to something more reasonable that everyone can afford, providing good work experience for high school students during the summer, bringing jobs and much-needed supplies to areas where most companies won't even go, etc. They may not be perfect, but without Wal-Mart, living anywhere in the U.S. outside of major metro areas would really, really suck. On the whole the good things that they do for our country FAR outweigh the bad, and IMHO, the Wikipedia article reflects that. It isn't corporate defacement. It is simply showing Wal-Mart without the evtremely negative bias that some people would like to throw into the mix to detract from fairness.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Believe it or not, about 20 years ago, PBS refused to air a Canadian documentary about the Soviet Union's deliberate creation of a famine in the 1930's in Ukraine, even though the film won many awards from credible organizations. Their excuse was that the Soviets didn't get to present their viewpoint!
(Ultimately, PBS did run the film, called "Harvest of Despair," but only because William Buckley ran it on his program. Even then, they forced Buckley to include a discussion with a panel of "experts," who bashed the film.)
As for your comment about Albertsons employees eating cake, while I know you're trying to attack my opinion, you are actually bolstering it significantly. The people who benefit the most from Wal-Mart are the ones who can't afford to buy groceries, including employees working at or near minimum wage at supermarkets, local stores, etc. When people have to pay more for their most basic commodities, it hurts the poor the most.
What most people fail to realize when they see Wal-Mart as the big, bad, evil juggernaut, is that the employees of Wal-Mart often end up better off with less benefits from Wal-Mart supercenters than they do with better benefits from unionized, benefits-bearing labor at other supermarkets. Why? Because when the supercenter moves into town, those low-paid workers end up paying so much less for their basic needs.
When you're spending most of your money on food and shelter, cutting 30% off the cost of your food makes a big difference. By contrast, broader availability of (non-emergency) medical plans generally make little difference in quality of life for the vast majority of Wal-Mart employees, who are predominantly young and relatively healthy compared with the average workforce.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.