October 18, 2014
News reporting should not be a he said, she said affair when it comes to factual matters. In principle, reporters have the time to determine the truth, readers do not.
For this reason, it was disappointing to read in an otherwise good NYT article on the push for higher wages at Walmart:
“Retail workers ages 25 to 54 who work full time for at least three consecutive months make an average of $38,376 a year, slightly more than full-time workers in nonretail jobs, the group [the National Retail Federation] said.”
This was the effort by the retailers to claim that they actually pay good wages. The problem with letting this claim appear with no context is that readers have no idea what percent of the industry’s workers are classified as “full-time” and work for more than three months at the same store. The classification of full-time is central here.
The report does shed some additional light on this issue. It tells readers that 23.3 percent of the workers in the industry are between the ages of 16-24. It estimates that 30.5 percent are part-time and 32.2 percent are classified as unstable, meaning that they aren’t employed for three consecutive months. While there is substantial overlap in these three categories, it is also important to realize that employees over age 55 are not included in the industry group’s $38,376 average annual wage either. In other words, this average is among workers who comprise a minority, and likely a relatively small minority, of industry employees. It would have been helpful if the NYT article had pointed this fact out to readers.
Comments