Fox News hosts read directly from Walmart's official corporate script to defend the company against a critical New York Times op-ed that indicated the retailer's role in perpetuating the need for government assistance programs.
On June 19, The New York Times published an op-ed calling Walmart “a big part of the problem” of rising economic inequality in the United States. Citing data from multiple sources, opinion columnist Timothy Egan noted that the average “associate” at Walmart makes between $8.81 and $11 per hour, frequently relying on government anti-poverty relief to fill income gaps. Egan noted that Walmart claims its average employee makes “at least $12 per hour,” but that “these numbers are skewed by higher pay for management.” Egan cited a recent exposé by Fortune senior editor Stephen Gandel detailing how the company could easily give a 50 percent raise to more than one million employees without hurting its stock value or profitability:
No matter the exact figure, there's no dispute that Walmart's business model forces thousands of hard-working people to look for outside help just to get by.
And under that model, Walmart has made a fortune -- $17 billion in profits last year, executive compensation for one man at the top in excess of $20 million a year, and a windfall making the six heirs of the founding Walton family worth at least $150 billion.
Walmart could make life easier for its 1.4 million workers, without diminishing its stock value. Writing in Fortune.com, Stephen Gandel concluded that Walmart could give workers a 50 percent raise without hurting shareholder value.
On the June 23 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy and Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney dedicated a segment to supposedly fact-checking the Times, pulling pushback directly from Walmart's officially sanctioned corporate response.
Varney called the Times op-ed “utter nonsense,” and an attempt to “demonize Walmart.” Ignoring that Egan acknowledged the dispute over Walmart's average hourly wage in the op-ed, Varney stated that the author “got it wrong” as he recited Walmart's more palatable average wage claim. Doocy and Varney uncritically agreed that the data supplied by Walmart was “all true” before pivoting to place blame for economic inequality at the feet of the Obama administration:
Despite Fox's unabashed foray into corporate public relations, Timothy Egan's statement holds true: “No matter the exact figure, there's no dispute that Walmart's business model forces thousands of hard-working people to look for outside help just to get by.”
According to an April 2014 study by Americans for Tax Fairness, Walmart benefits from roughly $6.2 billion in annual taxpayer funded subsidies in the form of anti-poverty relief for underpaid workers. The company avoids nearly $1 billion in federal taxes each year through tax breaks and loopholes, and the Walton family (worth nearly $150 billion collectively) reaps over $600 million in tax savings thanks to lower tax rates on capital gains than standard income. All told, Walmart and the Walton family skim at least $7.8 billion from the pockets of American taxpayers each year, due in part to the company's persistently low wages.
Fox News has a long history of lamenting any attempt to increase compensation for average workers, including vigorous opposition to increasing the federal minimum wage. The network also has a record of running interference for Walmart, providing the corporate giant a safe harbor in which to weather public criticism.