E-Mailbag: Revisiting The Wal-Mart Question
Despite what we may think of as the ideal, the news business is, well, a business. You can argue about the economics of it all, but the bottom line is that it costs money to gather and distribute news.
Video: I have a serious concern about your exclusive interview with Wal-Mart's CEO, which was teased on your broadcast this evening. Wal-Mart, as noted at the close of your broadcasts last week … partially sponsors CBSNews.com. This does cause one to wonder about your editorial objectivity. Was the interview part of getting the advertising buy? I would have less of an issue if the advertising copy was not read by the same announcer who does the voice-over for other CBS items within your broadcast. This is a reasonable question, and should be addressed as part of your newscast tomorrow evening.I asked "Evening News" Executive Producer Rome Hartman to respond to these concerns and, in and e-mail, he wrote, "news judgments and advertising are completely unrelated, in this and every case. Period." We visited this issue last December and asked Mike Sims, director of news and operations for CBSNews.com, whether advertising impacted editorial content in any way:
"Absolutely not," said Sims. "I would invite you to search for Wal-Mart on our site. You'll see a number of stories that are negative." Sims adds that when CBSNews.com runs a negative story about the company, Wal-Mart has the option to keep their ad from running on that page – but the company typically doesn't exercise that option.In response to this specific e-mail, Sims reiterated those comments, saying, "the evidence shows that neither Evening News nor CBSNews.com have ever been shy about doing negative stories about Wal-Mart during the term of their sponsorship. The proof is on the web site." Sims also wanted it to be clear that "the announcer used for the Wal-Mart commercial on CBSNews.com is not used elsewhere on the site."
I also asked Mason what he thought about the question. Mason told me in an e-mail that Curtis "is certainly right to raise the flag. I've done it myself with our senior producers whenever I've done a Wal-Mart story. I've always been told not to worry about the ads. And so I haven't." Mason added that the Wal-Mart sponsorship has "never effected a word I've written about the company," but added that he can understand the perception that it might.
It's worth noting that the "Evening News" and CBSNews.com have done stories critical of Wal-Mart in the past and our very own Brian Montopoli did a very thorough job of vetting this very issue last year. I urge anyone who might be concerned about the issue to go back and read his post>. As Brian said then, "As long as media outlets accept advertising … they will always be open to charges that they can be influenced." And vigilant viewers are needed to keep asking these questions.