Pixiq

Yo Carlos, long time no post but I’ve been reading from a feed.

I happened to be in Walmart today. I didn’t notice anything about no media being allowed but I did hear announcements for the “Saftey Team” meeting. I’m assuming it should have been called the “Holiday” or “Black Friday” safety team.

I do agree with you that banning journalists isn’t going to make a difference as far as crowd control is concerned and that there will be plenty of cameras there to take photos anyway so why bother.

On another note I had to stop by the Monroe (PA) County Court House today to get some papers recorded. When I entered the Court House they took my cell phone from me becaue it had a camera in it. I haven’t checked on photogaphy in PA court houses yet but these guys are cracking down on all kinds of cameras but I think if they are taking cell phone cameras they should be taking cell phones as well. They are kind of annoying when they ring in the middle of something important.

“Almost everybody carries around some time of camera these days.”

Have you tried pulling out a camera, or for that matter a cell phone (while not making a call or texting) in a Walmart lately. The quality of camera is the deciding factor on how long it takes a monkey in a blue smock to come up and say “Sorry sir we do not allow cameras”

i’ll be there. Recording.

Carlos: “The smart thing would have been to implement safety changes to prevent people getting trampled on…. But we know Walmart did no such thing.”

Actually, you’re flat-out wrong:

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=11495264

Get your facts right next time. You lose much credibility this way.

Sydney,

Now that you’ve taken the role as the Walmart spokesman, tell me why isn’t Walmart allowing the media into its stores to cover this grandiose event?

Carlos,

Why so hostile? You were wrong. Just deal with it and go on with your story, maybe by posting a correction or something. If you want to update your post with a correction, perhaps you can also append a note saying that you’ve tried emailing or calling Wall Mart’s executive department for comment.

Don’t you see that you’re shooting yourself in the foot here? You complain about peopel blaming the media, and then you get the facts wrong. Obviously, it’s very easy to blame the media (including bloggers) if they don’t get the facts right.

Sydney,

I am not being hostile. I am just asking a simple question which you haven’t answered.

The main point of this post is about how Walmart has banned the media from its stores on Black Friday.

Do you really believe that if I would have contacted Walmart, I would have received a response?

That is why I leave the comments section open.

Carlos,

Blogs often get responses from big corporations. Consumerist, and their individual readers, get them all the time. You’d be surprised.

In any event, since I’m not a Wallmart spokesman, I don’t need to answer your question. But since you say you’re not being hostile, I’ll consider it. Maybe they’re fine with media doing stuff outside of the store, but don’t want the media doing TV shots in the store because it causes too much disruption in an already packed and frustrating environment? Or, maybe they’re being hacks and blaming the media anyway? Or maybe a combination of both?

I’m sorry, but I can’t get too worked up over this one. The MSM are scum, for the most part.

Sydney,

I appreciate your responses and I did correct my post.

This is not one to get worked up over. There are many more important issues on this blog than that one.

Hi everyone. I work in Walmart media relations and want to clarify what we are doing this year. As you know, the Friday after Thanksgiving is a very busy day for our stores, and our first priority is taking care of our customers as they shop our stores. We do have a store open to the media from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. this Friday in the following cities: Atlanta, Houston, Denver and Sacramento. If you have any interest in these locations, please call our media relations hotline at 800-331-0085.

Hi Daphne,

Thanks for the comment. Why is the media restricted to only a handful of locations?

Who needs the media when citizen journalists seem to get the videos anyway?