Wal-Mart Lifts Ban on Florida Newspaper Sparked by Critical Column

By: Wal-Mart will allow the Pensacola News Journal to be sold at area stores, rescinding a ban imposed because of a newspaper column that a local manager considered derogatory to the retailer.

Columnist Mark O'Brien wrote in June 19 editions that Pensacola should "be more than the Wal-Mart kind of town we're becoming -- cheap and comfy on the surface, lots of unhappiness and hidden costs underneath."

O'Brien then cited a New York Times report that Georgia's health-care program included more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart workers, costing taxpayers nearly $10 million a year. He noted the Times report was cited in "The World is Flat," a new book by Thomas Friedman about the global economy.

"We did make an error in judgment by removing the papers from our stores," Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Sharon Weber said in an e-mail from company headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. "They should be available in our stores by the end of the week."

Wal-Mart sells the "The World is Flat" in its stores and on its Web site, Weber noted in a follow-up e-mail.

"I am unaware of any prior instance in which a book or periodical was removed from our shelves because it was critical of our company," she wrote.

Weber declined to discuss any disciplinary action against Pensacola district manager Bob Hart, who issued the ban.

"There are lots of different ways to disagree with people; this wasn't necessarily one of them," said News Journal executive editor Randy Hammer. "I'm just glad for our readers that they'll be able to get the newspaper where they want it."

Hart, who was on vacation Tuesday, defended Wal-Mart's wage and employment practices in a letter to the editor published by the News Journal on July 3.

Hart said the average full-time pay is more than $10 an hour, twice the federal minimum wage, and that a recent survey estimated 160,000 people nationally had moved off uninsured status by going to work for Wal-Mart.

"At Wal-Mart, we're proud of our company, proud of our community and pleased to be a vital part of our area economy," Hart concluded. He did not address the newspaper ban in his letter.

In a column published Sunday, Hammer wrote that he, too, sometimes disagrees with O'Brien but defended the columnist's right to express an opinion.

Hammer said that in a conversation with Hart, the Wal-Mart manager had said he'd be willing to talk about lifting the ban if the newspaper fired O'Brien.

"I might understand it if Wal-Mart said I ought to fire Mark because what he said wasn't accurate," Hammer wrote. "But that isn't the case."