NightBlogger

Photo by jurek d.

Facing South
Fast-food giant Burger King announced this week that it fired two employees who posted libelous comments to public Web sites about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organization pressing the company to pay a penny more per pound for tomatoes to boost pay for farmworkers. The company also told the News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla. that it has stopped using an investigative firm to spy on farmworker advocates.

The company would not identify the fired employees. But earlier this year, the News-Press reported that Steven Grover — Burger King’s vice president of food safety, quality assurance and regulatory compliance — used his daughter’s online alias to make false and derogatory comments about CIW. Last month, the paper also revealed that Cara Schaffer, the owner of the investigative firm Diplomatic Tactical Services, infiltrated the Student/Farmworker Alliance, a CIW ally. Read more

Photo Editor B

In 2006 Hewlett-Packard was caught spying on journalists. Last year Wal-Mart apologized for improperly recording conversations with a New York Times reporter. And now it turns out that the Burger King Corporation, home of the Whopper, hired a private security firm to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance, a group of idealistic college students trying to improve the lives of migrants in Florida. Read more