Walmart Performance in the Media - Assignment Example

In doing the research, I hit upon two different opinion articles on Walmart, one by Steve Forbes on Forbes.com and one by Robert Reich on NYTimes.com. Steve Forbes is a well-respected president and CEO of Forbes magazine, a business journal that is highly regarded in the business sector. He was also a Republican candidate in 1996 and 2000, putting forth such conservative ideas as the flat tax, a rehaul of Social Security, school choice, and a strong national defense (Forbes.com). While I respect Mr. Forbes, in that he is very accomplished and very learned, I do not agree with his fundamental values, as I consider myself to be more of a Democrat than a Republican. That said, there is no denying that Mr. Forbes is a well-respected man within his field.  However, because I do not agree with him on his fundamental values, it is difficult to not have a jaundiced eye on his editorials.

Then, after reading just a few paragraphs, my eye was jaundiced to him even more – he derisively quotes Robert Reich in his article “Isn't Capitalism Brutal?”, stating that Reich, expressing the view that Walmart crushes retailers, “complained that the retailing giant has turned 'main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers'"  (Forbes, 2009). Then, I found the article in which he was speaking, and it turns out that Robert Reich did state the above quote, but he was stating that this is what Walmart detractors say about Walmart. The article defends Walmart's practices overall (Reich, 2005). In other words, Forbes took Reich's words completely out of context.  If you read the Forbes article, you would assume that Reich believes that Walmart is bad and turns towns into ghost towns, but when you read the actual article, you realize that Reich is stating just the opposite. I am not sure why Forbes did this – Reich was labor secretary from 1993 to 1997 - in other words, he was President Clinton's labor secretary - and he did write a book called “Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America” (Reich, 2005), so Forbes probably holds Reich up to be a liberal. Therefore, he might assume that Reich would be against Walmart. At any rate, Forbes either didn't read Reich's article, or he deliberately quoted him out of context. Either way, the article that Forbes wrote lost credibility instantly with me because of that one gaffe.

The other article I examined was written by Emek Basker and was published in the Journal of Urban Economics (Basker, 2005, pp. 203-229). In researching more about this particular journal, I hit upon the Impact Factor which is composed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and the Thomas Reuters Corporation. These organizations rank economic journals for their impact on the scientific debate, by their number of citations in other articles, and by their influence on the industry (Social Capital Gateway). According to this, the Journal of Urban Economics ranks around the middle of the pack of 100 journals reviewed, with an average ranking of about 55 for the three factors (Social Capital Gateway). That said, this article is in a peer-reviewed journal and involved a scientific study, whereby the retail prices for 10 specific goods were evaluated around the country to determine if these good's prices were lowered when a Walmart entered the market, and a determination was found that stores prices in Walmart towns were lower than towns and cities that did not have a Walmart (Basker, 2005, pp. 28-29).

Because Basker's article involved a scientific study and statistics to back up the impact that Walmart has on other retail stores that compete directly with Walmart, and Forbes' article not only quoted Robert Reich out of context but cited two studies that were hand-picked to support his thesis – that Walmart does not hurt small businesses – while there are probably many other studies that undermine this thesis that, of course, were not quoted by Forbes, I found the article by Basker more credible than the article by Forbes. Forbes is a conservative, pro-business guy, therefore, in his articles, he probably tends to cherry-pick studies that fit his agenda. Not to fault him for that, probably every opinion article writer does the same thing, but that is the problem with op-ed pieces in general. You are getting only one side of the story. Whereas with Basker's article, there was not an agenda, but a dispassionate scientific inquiry that is reported with equal dispassion. He conducted the study himself, not relying upon others, as Forbes does in his article. For these reasons, I found Basker more credible than Forbes.