I understand your perspective, but it should be pretty clear while people are going to "pile on Starbucks". If they had come out and said that they negotiated l

I understand your perspective, but it should be pretty clear while people are going to "pile on Starbucks". If they had come out and said that they negotiated lower tuition fees for their employees, they'd have gotten a small PR bump and some deserved good will. However, they were intentionally misleading. Furthermore, there's a pretty good chance that a large number of folks who got wind of the original PR blitz will never hear this follow-up story. Starbucks' PR team took an intentional calculated risk in running the story the way that they did. The savvy public has a moral obligation to make these sorts of scummy marketing bets produce a lower expected value.