TV documentaries examine the Wal-Mart from inside and out

By Joanne Weintraub
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

CUAUHTEMOC BELTRAN / AP Shoppers leave a Wal-Mart store in Calexico, Calif. Plans are in the works to open a Supercenter in Calexico, after Wal-Mart championed voter initiatives to repeal local ordinances that had blocked its expansion.

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It's the nation's largest real-estate developer, film developer and private employer. With sales expected to approach $300 billion this year, it moves more CDs, DVDs, guns, toothpaste, bedding, socks, diamonds and dog food than anyone in the country.

But is Wal-Mart good for America? Two new reports, one on cable and the other on PBS, ask the question.

In CNBC's "The Age of Wal-Mart," which airs at 7 tonight, reporter David Faber ("Squawk Box") sits down with executives and suppliers, goes to 7 a.m. pep rallies and attends the opening of the latest Chinese Wal-Mart, whose grocery aisles boast live turtles and sliced pig's ear.

He finds a corporation whose efficiency is legendary, whose managers display a quasi-religious zeal and whose customers include the estimated 82 percent of American households where someone shopped at a Wal-Mart last year.

The chain's impact on consumer habits, employment, land use and international trade is only part of the story.

Thanks to a voracious appetite for goods, its clout with suppliers is such that companies from Coca-Cola to Kodak have opened offices near Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Its DVD and CD sales make it a cultural player, too, as repeated visits from Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg attest.

On TV "The Age of Wal-Mart: Inside America's Most Powerful Company" 7 tonight on CNBC. "Frontline: Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" at 10 p.m. tomorrow on PBS (KCTS).

But Wal-Mart is a leader in other areas. On an average day, it faces three new lawsuits. An existing one, charging discrimination in hiring and promotions, is the largest ever filed.

In an interview with CEO Lee Scott, Faber asks him whether he believes any of Wal-Mart's opponents — neighborhood preservationists, union leaders or anyone else — might have a point.

Scott replies, in short: No.

How about Wal-Mart's notoriously low contributions toward health insurance for its workers? Would folksy founder Sam Walton approve?

Well, says Scott, it's one more way to keep prices low. And, he adds brightly, many employees are covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

Hedrick Smith takes a different tack in the PBS "Frontline" hour "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?" looking more closely at the chain's reliance on cheap Chinese imports.

Smith talks to the CEO of a sock manufacturer, Kentucky Derby Hosiery, who says the retailer's insistence on rock-bottom prices is driving the company to open its first plant in China.

He also visits Wooster, Ohio, the longtime home of one of the country's most familiar brand names, Rubbermaid.

In 1994, Fortune magazine named the maker of garbage cans, bathmats and scores of other domestic products America's most admired company.

Since then, Rubbermaid's fortunes have declined steeply. Former company leaders blame much of the reversal on Wal-Mart, which dropped a number of products after the price of resin, an indispensable raw material, rose steeply. Wal-Mart officials declined to talk to Smith about it.

Fortune magazine's most recent choice for most admired company, Smith adds in an ironic note, was Wal-Mart.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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