Reporter: Columns Can’t Criticize Advertisers

If you haven’t read any hard-hitting columns in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about Wal-Mart Stores Inc., there’s a reason.

A former Wal-Mart reporter for the newspaper told us she received a memo after writing a column in February that quoted some international Wal-Mart employees saying that the Springdale Supercenter was a mess.

The former reporter said the memo, which came from Managing Editor David Bailey, basically said, “We don’t persecute our advertisers in our news columns.”

A column is an opinion piece accompanied by the author’s byline.

Executive Editor Griffin Smith said the D-G had a policy initiated around 1989 by former Managing Editor John Robert Starr that columnists are not to criticize advertisers. Reporters, though, are to “follow the truth wherever it leads,” he said.

The reporter in question was put in an uncomfortable position, apparently, by being asked to occasionally change hats and become a columnist. With the policy in place, she would only be allowed to write favorable columns about Wal-Mart.

Smith said the D-G previously allowed reporters to write columns about their beats in Little Rock, but that was stopped in 1992.

Smith said the weekly “Northwest Arkansas Business Matters” section, where the critical column appeared, operates somewhat independently from the Little Rock office, but “we don’t encourage [column writing by reporters] or see it as a model for the future.”

Wal-Mart, which is based in Bentonville, advertises in the D-G.

The reporter noted, however, that she wrote a column critical of Kmart Corp., which is based in Troy, Mich., shortly afterward and received no complaints from the D-G management.