Headline Turner

The heading in the paper read "Wal-Mart settles in child labor cases". Immediately my thoughts were that Wal-Mart was having little kids over seas working in factories making all of their items, and then selling their products at low low prices. Well this turned out not to be the case. The cases were 24 violations which occurred in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Arkansas. The cases were over teen-age workers using hazardous equipment such as chain saws, fork lifts, and paper balers. These do not seem like horrible crimes. Many of the teenage workers probably volunteered to drive the forklift, or have ran a chain saw since they were twelve. This does not make it right, but is the headline fair? What if this headline was printed on page one of the newspaper and not page ten? This headline could hurt sales of Wal-Mart. Many people in their fast paced lives simply scan the headlines to get their news. That is how I found this one. What if 50 people in Washington County scan this headline, never reading the article, and decided not to shop at Wal-Mart anymore because they think Wal-Mart has committed horrible acts concerning child labor. Now 50 people will not make a difference, but if they tell 50, and they tell 50, and so on and so on, Wal-Mart may begin to wonder why it has had such a drop in customers. Now I know this is a tall stretch, but my point is that the media, newspapers, TV, magazines, and radio have a great effect on our economy. In all forms of media we see advertisement for this and that, we get hourly reports on stocks, and breaking news on businesses. I do not think the Marietta Wal-Mart or any other Wal-Mart will be hurt by this page 10 article, but it posses another question, if you just read the headline, and came up with your own assumptions, would you still shop there?