An article in Business Day on Friday reported that the Walton Family
Foundation had made contributions to four conservative research groups
whose analysts wrote articles favorable to Wal-Mart Stores for
newspapers and journals around the country. The Times article said that
the groups and their employees had consistently failed to disclose the
donations, and it said in the first paragraph that the Manhattan
Institute for Policy Research was one of them. But a Manhattan
Institute author had told The Times that he had indeed disclosed
contributions from the Walton Foundation in an article he wrote, a fact
that should have been included in the Times article.
The article
also reported that Tim Kane of the Heritage Foundation and Karl
Zinsmeister, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, were among
those who wrote articles favorable to Wal-Mart after their foundations
received a donation.
Both those groups were called for comment
for the Times article. Mr. Kane, who was not called, subsequently said
that he did not know about the Walton Family Foundation contribution
and that he had criticized Wal-Mart’s call for a higher federal minimum
wage in an article he wrote. The Times also did not ask Mr. Zinsmeister
to comment, but he declined to do so when reached after the Times
article was published. Both Mr. Kane and Mr. Zinsmeister should have
been asked to comment before publication. Link
