My Last WalMart Blog

Published on March 7, 2006 By Gideon MacLeish In Current Events

I watched a yahoo! News piece citing a NY Times story that WalMart was enlisting bloggers to fight the blog war. The reason that concerns me is that I have blogged repeatedly in favor of WalMart, and their actions undermine my credibility in endorsing a company I largely believe in. As a result, I will no longer be blogging on Walmart, pro or con, except to respond to other bloggers.

Let me be very clear in stating that I have never received a dime from WalMart for promotion of their business practices. While I am not above doing so (business is business), I feel it is my ethical obligation to provide you with the source of my information, even if that source comes direcly from WalMart's PR department.

I don't have a problem with the bloggers who have used the information from WalMart. After all, as I said in the last paragraph, business is business. But hiding your sources is not an ethical way to write, at least not in my opinion. I'm done blogging on WalMart (unless they send a check!)

Comments

singrdave

on Mar 07, 2006

Nice disclosure. Very necessary and appropriate, considering what has come to light.

I haven't really been a pro- or con-WalMart blogger, but in the interest of full disclosure, up until 4 months ago I held approx. 10 shares of WalMart stock. I sold it to buy a car.

Dr Guy

on Mar 07, 2006

Catch 22. NOw you are stopping because of another claim, so the anti-walmart group has another victory.

I wont stop. I have made it clear that while I support Wal-Mart, I refuse to shop them. Guess that makes me about as neutral as you can get.

Gideon MacLeish

on Mar 07, 2006

NOw you are stopping because of another claim, so the anti-walmart group has another victory.

No, frankly, I'm stopping because I am doing for free what WalMart is PAYING others to do. No sense giving away a service that's worth something.

If WalMart wants to give me a check to shill for them, I'm all for it. But if I receive such a check, I will make damn sure my readers know about it, something that doesn't seem to be the norm.

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