In Georgia, Wal-Mart has decided to stop carrying an independent local newspaper that has run critical stories about them. They certainly have a legal right to do this, but the action says a lot about the ethical and community character (or lack thereof) of Wal-Mart management. In effect, they prove that the criticism was well-earned.

The Pensacola News Journal reports on their situation (via Oliver Willis):

Bob Hart, one of the upper managers for the Wal-Marts in the area, called me and said he didn’t like Mark’s column, didn’t like a lot of Mark’s columns. I told Mr. Hart that I don’t particularly like some of Mark’s columns either. ... But Mark speaks his mind. And the truth be told, that’s what he gets paid to do...

Mr. Hart, however, said he and his stores couldn’t tolerate a newspaper that would print the opinions of someone who was as mean and negative as Mark O’Brien. ... Mr. Hart said he wanted the newspaper to get its racks off his lots. But he also said that if I fired Mark, we could talk about continuing to sell the newspaper at his stores.

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?

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.

That’s why Mark still has a job and you can’t buy a Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore.

So, Wal-Marts in Georgia can’t tolerate negative commentary in the newspapers — not because the commentary is inaccurate, but because it is negative. It’s not accuracy that concerns Wal-Mart, but perception. It would seem, then, that Wal-Mart prefers the perception of goodness when it’s inaccurate — in fact, may prefer the perception of goodness to the reality of goodness, so long as the perception is cheaper and easier to obtain.

It is certainly cheaper and easier to stop selling a local newspaper for being too critical than it is to simply talk about the substantive issues that the newspaper raises, much less actually work to address some of those issues and right some of the wrongs being done. It’s always easier, at least in the short term, to silence dissent and shut out critics than to make changes. In the long term, though, it doesn’t work. In this case, for example, Wal-Mart is likely to get a lot more negative publicity than before.

And, once again, it will all be well earned.

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