TORONTO – It’s the war of the fact checks after a New York Times columnist urged Walmart to pay workers more in an effort to help fix the income gap plaguing America’s poor.
Timothy Egan’s op-ed accusing Walmart of “humiliating wages” earned a red-pen edit from Walmart Corporate Communications VP David Tovar, which then spurred another fact check from the Huffington Post declaring Walmart’s piece “mostly bulls—t.”
Walmart’s Tovar asked to see Egan’s math, claimed Walmart is the largest taxpayer in America, said the company sees “more associates move off of public assistance as a result of their job at Walmart.”
He also provided links to various articles that he said supported the company’s claims on costs and employee information.
Read the full rebuttal below:
But Huffington Post’s Mark Gongloff cited data that largely disputed Walmart’s claims, or at least called attention to their vagueness.
He linked to 24/7 Wall Street’s study that Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Apple and Wells Fargo paid more in taxes than Walmart, pointed out the company linked to an anecdotal YouTube video instead of hard numbers on the amount of workers on public assistance, and showed that many of the articles Walmart referred to were unrelated to the points he was trying to make.
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