An Uncensored Wal-Mart Blog? Really?

An article from last week’s New York Times applauded Wal-Mart’s latest online outreach effort - a blog called “Check Out” - for its transparency and honesty. Well, as long as Wal-Mart approves of that honesty, it seems.

The document above is a copy of Wal-Mart’s corporate internet policy for employees. At line 28:

“Associates must not make statements or post items that negatively impact on Wal-Mart’s reputation and/or that are derogatory or defamatory to any Wal-Mart Associate, customer or supplier.”

Wal-Mart’s had a hard time with that whole transparency concept in the past, so what does this mean for Wal-Mart’s supposedly unbiased Check Out blog? Perhaps what bloggers have suspected all along: that the writers are merely toeing the company line. 

Company-approved content ONLY
Let’s look a little closer at the “unfiltered” and “uncensored” blog that the New York Times and others claimed was openly critical of its suppliers. (The Times goes so far as to say “Wal-Mart is now encouraging (emph. added) its merchants to speak frankly, even critically, about the products the chain carries") Turns out there’s only a single example of this on the Check Out site: it’s when Blogger Alex Cook questioned the usefulness of Window’s Vista. The problem is, that’s right in line with Bentonville’s stance on the issue. As reported several weeks ago, Wal-Mart Corporate has been anti-vista for some time. And why wouldn’t they? They thought it would be bad for business.

Checkout has brought up some interesting points on the larger issues surrounding Wal-Mart, but it’s time to stop pretending these bloggers are renegades with a carte blanche to take down Wal-Mart suppliers whenever they see fit. Unless we see further proof, we’ll just assume that Edelman has this website under lock and key just like the last two. But here’s hoping…

Posted by Media Team on Thursday, March 13, 2008

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