The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
Staff, Wire Reports
Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2018 07:25 PM
Walmart Pulls T-Shirt That Journalism Advocacy Group Found Offensive
Following a complaint from a journalism
advocacy group, Walmart has ended its online sales of a T-shirt that the
group argued sent a threatening message.
The shirt design read "Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED."
It was listed on Walmart.com through an outside company, Teespring,
which helps users market their T-shirt designs.
Toronto Sun
@TheTorontoSun
Walmart pulls T-shirt offered by an outside seller from its online store
saying 'Rope. Tree. Journalist.' http://ow.ly/s0Fa30gVzWO
"This item was sold by a third-party seller on our marketplace and
clearly violates our policy," Walmart said. "We removed it as soon as it
was brought to our attention, and are conducting a thorough review of
the seller's assortment.”
Teespring confirmed the shirt has been pulled, and said it was working
on measures to prevent sales of other offensive T-shirts.
"As soon as we were alerted to this content promoting violence against
journalists we removed the content, added this content to our automated
scanning systems, and kicked off a human sweep of the site to find and
remove any similar content," the company said.
It wasn't the first time a shirt with controversial content has slipped
through the cracks at Teespring. In August, the company vowed to
increase oversight of its product line after complaints prompted the
ending of "rainbow swastika" T-shirt sales.
The Radio Television Digital News Association said Walmart confirmed the
journalism shirt was being removed about five hours after its initial
complaint.
"We are grateful for Walmart's swift action, but dismayed that it, and
anyone else selling the shirt, would offer such an offensive and
inflammatory product," Dan Shelley, the group's executive director,
said.
A shirt with the same sentiment was seen at a rally during the 2016
presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, the matter has inspired some journalists to create their own
rebuttal T-shirts, Poynter reported.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
