The world is overflowing with information and it is important to commit to reading. It is not sufficient to get all your information from someone else’s word. You read the information for yourself, understand it and be able to make decisions about it for yourself.
It is important to read things for yourself.
I am a person who enjoys social media. I have met people on Facebook who became business partners and friends before we met in person. By reading updates on social media, I have learned about births, deaths and current events. All of these things are wonderful and a reason to treasure the ease and convenience of social media. At the same time, social media show that we must search out information and read things for ourselves. Just today while flipping through Facebook statuses I came across a headline in a status update that said “Starbucks CEO: If you Support Traditional Marriage, We Don’t Want Your Business.” The person who posted it commented, “No more Starbucks for me.”
Read More: Books Develop Healthy Reading Habits
I have happily been part of a traditional marriage for the past 26 years and I am a Starbucks coffee-house visitor so of course the headline got my attention. If Starbucks doesn’t like traditional marriage, of course, I don’t need to give them my money. When I saw the update, I had a choice. I could go and read the actual article for myself or I could simply agree with the status update and add my voice to those hating on Starbucks. I chose to go and read the article.
The article in question did a good job of laying out a whole campaign about Starbucks’ CEO being anti-traditional marriage. However, the article had no actual quote from Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks actually saying anything against traditional marriage. In addition, the article was talking about an incident that happened back in December of 2015. I didn’t stop there. I did a few internet searches and found another article that actually quoted what Mr. Schultz said at the shareholders’ meeting. He did not attack traditional marriage or state that he preferred gay marriage to traditional marriage. Instead, he told answered a question by stating that if the person asking him a question thought they could get a higher return than the 38 percent they got from Starbucks stock the previous year, “it’s a free country. You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in another company.”
Continued on page 2. Click 2 below to continue.
1 2