By Andrew Stern

REUTERS -- Wal-Mart – the biggest force in retailing and the world's largest company based on its $244.5 billion in fiscal 2002 sales – has removed three men's magazines from its shelves. Maxim, Stuff and FHM were dropped after customers complained of their racy covers with scantily clad models.

A glance through Wal-Mart's magazine rack in Niles, Illinois, by Reuters reporter Andrew Stern, found other covers showing lots of skin, including Sports Illustrated's famed swimsuit issue and body-building magazines.

"It's not like people at Wal-Mart are sitting in a room saying 'you know, I don't like that magazine, or I don't like that type of food," spokesman Tom Williams said, denying any political ideology lurking behind which products to carry.

"There are going to be issues in the future when we stop carrying a product and some people are going to be unhappy about it, but why did we take that action? It's driven by customers," he said, adding that Wal-Mart continually evaluates the roughly 100,000 items it sells.

Coincidentally, on the same day that it came to light that Wal-Mart had bowed to customer complaints about the magazines, a Christian retailing organization called Kingdom Ventures, Inc., announced that Wal-Mart and rival Costco were both candidates for its 'Christian Merchants' program.

Interest groups applying pressure on corporations is nothing new, said Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project in Washington.

"If Wal-Mart were just one small store, one might agree or disagree with their tastes. But it becomes a free expression concern when they have that kind of market power," Heins said.

excerpted from:
"Wal-Mart's Dilemma: Censorship or Dollars and Cents"
By Andrew Stern
© Reuters 5/9/03
as reported in
Free Speech X-Press
Vol. V, No. 28, May 16, 2003

L A T E  F L A S H
Wal-Mart's Censors Stike Yet Again

By Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown

BENTONVILLE, AK -- Wal-Mart has now begun using special newsrack covers for four other magazines: Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Redbook, and Marie Claire, according to Agape Press, mouthpiece for the online Christian Right. The new covers will prevent viewing both the left and right sides of the magazine covers, where "questionable" wording and headlines are usually located. A Wal-Mart spokesman says the hope is that the planned approach will strike a "reasonable balance" between customers who purchase those magazines and those who are "not comfortable with seeing these covers at the checkout lanes."

Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the American Family Association, says Wal-Mart is taking corporate responsibility by listening to the concerns of families.

"Wal-Mart is becoming a trendsetter in taking this nation back to family-friendly policies within the marketplace," Sharp says.

excerpted from:
Wal-Mart Will Cover Up Cosmo, Other Magazines in Checkout Lanes
By Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown
Agape Press, June 6, 2003