How Wal-Mart is Using Bloggers

Well, this is interesting. It seems Wal-Mart has been contacting bloggers who are sympathetic to the company and sending them stories to write about.

Apparently, New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro has been following leads for a story he's preparing about this situation and now some bloggers are coming out of the shadows to admit they've been contacted. The Marquette Warrior is one of them.

At least two other bloggers on the Wal-Mart mailing list have been similarly contacted.

Barbaro has apparently noticed that similar stories concerning Wal-Mart have appeared roughly simultaneously in recent months. In some cases, bloggers on the list simply cut and pasted information in the e-mails into their blog posts.

The blog then details the chronology and their part in the scheme, concluding:

Of course, all tipsters and leakers have their own agenda. Manson's is to support Wal-Mart. The leakers in government that the Times uses want to undermine the Bush presidency. The job of a journalist is to exploit the agenda of a source without becoming captive to it.

Wal-Mart is in this, as in supply chain management, ahead of the curve. They are recognizing bloggers are a force that needs to be cultivated and catered to just as corporate PR people (and political activists) have long cultivated and catered to the traditional media.

Over at RedState, blogger Pejman Yousefzadeh likewise admits that he has been contacted by Wal-Mart and states emphatically:

The whole of my reaction to the e-mails has consisted of taking links to stories that interested me and were passed on to me, and writing whatever I wanted in terms of commentary concerning those stories.

Those interested in the ongoing discussions about blogger ethics and disclosure now have a new beast to tackle it seems - big business PR links and the appropriateness of hiding the fact that a company like Wal-Mart has actually sent you stories to comment on.

I'll tell my readers right now: if any company ever tried to get me to write anything about their products or their business on my blog, I'd immediately alert my readers. I would not be complicit in some underground propaganda campaign.

Whether those bloggers criticized Wal-Mart in their articles or not, I believe they should have disclosed Wal-Mart's behind-the-scenes practices to get them to comment on what was sent to them.

Just one more thing to hold against a company that must continually be challenged to do the ethical thing - like we needed any more.