Working as a flack for a public relations company representing Wal-Mart, Stephanie Harnett committed one of the big no-nos of journalism by falsely identifying herself as a reporter. Using a phony name, she claimed to be a student journalist from the University of Southern California in order to infiltrate a union press conference earlier this month. This week Harnett left the PR company, Mercury Public Affairs.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Harnett once was actually a student journalist at USC, graduating from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism in 2009 with a degree in print journalism. Her profile states she also worked for the Los Angeles Times and The Huffington Post.

Both Wal-Mart and Mercury Public Affairs have denounced Harnett’s actions. However, this isn’t the first time the retail giant has been tied to shady public relations tactics. Other PR representatives claimed to have been asked to assume false identities to gain access to anti-Wal-Mart meetings, and in 2006 Wal-Mart was involved in a PR-related scandal in which the company reportedly paid its own bloggers to pose as ordinary consumers and to promote the retailer through a fake blog.

— Posted by Tracy Bloom