Via LISNews.com, “Florida Wal-Mart Pulls Newspaper, Wants Journalist Fired“:
“kathleen writes: ‘Florida’s Pensacola News Journal will no longer be sold at the local Wal-Mart. Editor Randy Hammer noted: ‘Some managers at Wal-Mart didn’t appreciate a column Mark O’Brien wrote in June 2005 for the Pensacola News Journal about the downside of the cheap prices that Sam Walton’s empire has brought to America… The Wal-Mart manager said he and his stores couldn’t tolerate a newspaper that would print the opinions of someone who was as mean and negative as Mark O’Brien… and he wanted the newspaper to get its racks off Wal-Mart lots. But he also said that if I fired Mark, we could talk about continuing to sell the newspaper at his stores.
The article itself, available here, points out that communities are forced to pay for Wal-Mart health care via taxes because employees are unable to pay. This is an externality that Wal-Mart has managed to transfer to the public. Because that cost is delayed and distant from the price tag on the goods in the store, the public generally fails to recognize that these are connected.