Walmart has pulled a t-shirt offered by an outside seller from its online store after a journalist advocacy group said to the retailer that it found the shirt threatening.
The shirt, listed on Walmart.com through third-party seller Teespring, said:
“Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.”
Walmart said,
“This item was sold by a third-party seller on our marketplace and clearly violates our policy. We removed it as soon as it was brought to our attention, and are conducting a thorough review of the seller’s assortment.“
Teespring, which allows people to post shirt designs, confirmed that the shirt has been pulled and said it is working to prevent such content from slipping through its filters. The company said,
“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 Radio Television Digital News Association said Walmart notified it about five hours after its complaint that the shirt was being removed. The group’s executive director, Dan Shelley said,
“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.“
A shirt with the same sentiment had been spotted at a rally during the presidential campaign.
“Rope. Tree. Journalist.” shirt spotted at @realDonaldTrump rally in MN _ Reuters photo by Jonathan Ernst pic.twitter.com/1VTkYPOOVo
— Michael Biesecker (@mbieseck) November 7, 2016
(Photo, Instagram; via Bloomberg)
