So, on Tuesday night I went and saw a free showing of the new movie, "Walmart, the high cost of low price". It was basically a movie that tries to reveal all the evil practices of the Wal-Mart corporation. I have to say, if everything in this movie is true, then Wal-mart is the newest evil empire in our world. The atrocities that this movie tried to blame on Wal-Mart were horrible. They accused walmart of drive small family stores out of business with their low price tactics, treating there employees like slave labor, using shady, if not illegal, practices to prevent unions from forming, wantonly polluting our environment, creating sweat shops in other countries that resemble the sweat shops of this country's industrial revolution, ignoring their executives' cries for justice, and taking money away from the poor and schools to fund their new stores.
This movie was very one-sided and done much in the same way as Fahrenheit 9/11. After seeing the flaws of that movie revealed, I wonder if this movie uses the same tactics. One thing that made me wary was the way they presented their interviews. It seemed like they could have been taking comments out of context. In one place, it seemed as though they had totally cut and paste this woman's sentence together. Another problem I saw was their focus on the numbers of Walmarts faults such as crimes that took place in there parking lots and number of employees on welfare or dollars spent. Walmart is a gigantic company so of course they are going to have much larger amounts of these things than other companies. They didn't even compare these numbers to other companies, but I would have liked to see percentages compared to other companies. Another shady practice was while interviewing people who didn't speak English, instead of using subtitles and allowing us to hear their voice, which I think is the most honest form of journalism, they muted that persons voice and covered it with an English speaking interpretation.
So, I have to say that I'm disappointed with their journalism technique, but I think I do believe most of what this movie had to argue. I don't shop at Walmart anyways because I like to support local business and healthier food choices, and I don't think I will start shopping there any time soon. Walmart is making a rebuttal movie and I will be interested to see that.
One thing this movie didn't cover that I wish they had was how walmart uses "bullying" tactics to force their suppliers to give them large quantities of goods at very low prices which forces these companies to move their operations over sees. It has also caused brands to lose the "brand value" that they have spent so much time and money trying to establish. You can read more about this in the link below.
