Opus 2021-054: Headlines: Fake News or Misunderstanding

Recently I wrote about Bed Bath & Beyond dropping My Pillow products because he spoke out in support of President Trump.  My wife then announced to me that HEB, our local grocery chain, had also dropped his products.  This could cause a serious change in my shopping habits.  Since it would cause a bit of difficulty I decided to do a little homework.

My first stop was a search of HEB and My Pillow.  This brought up numerous hits and they all seemed to agree that HEB was guilty.  Since this seems to be totally out of character with an iconic Texas merchant I kept investigating.  I found the usual boilerplate writing which is a reflection of how lazy reporters are.  I finally noticed a little phrase saying that HEB had not responded to AP.  AP?  Why didn’t they say so.  I could have written it off as Fake News from the beginning.  Not wanting to be lazy myself just because it is convenient to be ignorant, I kept looking.  I noticed that all the stories came out in the same news cycle.

I decided to go to the horses mouth.  The local HEB site did not give me any place to call so I did what I should have done to start with and did a search for “corporate offices HEB”.  It came up right away, I dialed the toll free number and, after a bit of voice mail options, got a living person on the line.  She knew what I was asking and was very clear that HEB still carried My Pillow products.  She pointed out that not every store would have them but they were still available.  How come I could get a response and AP couldn’t?

So for now I am good.  I did my homework and learned once again that you can’t always believe what the media tells you.  That goes double when they all say exactly the same thing.

homo unius libri