According to articles and social media posts, DiCaprio is associated with Ukraine because his deceased maternal grandmother was born in the city of Odessa, Ukraine. Some articles claim that DiCaprio’s $ 10 million donation was announced by an organization called the International Visegrad Foundation.
The non-existent $ 10 million donation story is a case study of how bad information bubbling from online fringes to mainstream media outlets.
Stories with inadequate sources
Patrick Carpen, the founder of GSA News, stood behind the article Wednesday afternoon after being informed that sources close to DiCaprio had told CNN that the content was incorrect. “”
Carpen explained that the main source of DiCaprio’s estimated $ 10 million donation was a Facebook post from a Ukrainian woman whose post about the war with Russia was largely accurate.
Guyana’s website has a small readership, so he published a recurring article about DiCaprio and thought he could quietly remove the article within a few days if it turned out to be wrong, Carpen said. rice field.
“I thought it wouldn’t have many consequences if it was wrong,” he said.
Instead, he said the story was “snowballing everyone’s news publications, with millions of followers in it, and that kind of thing worries me … people just All you have to do is take something at face value and publish it, “he said with surprise and disappointment. “
However, he admitted that he himself made a face value claim from a Facebook poster.
On Twitter, then on another ambiguous website, then on the major outlets
Whether for GSA news articles, Ukrainian posts on Facebook, or for any other reason, the story about DiCaprio began to spread more widely on Sunday.
Over 10,000 retweets
Anyway, Visegrád24’s tweets have been retweeted more than 10,000 times. It was deleted Wednesday afternoon after CNN notified the account that the story about the $ 10 million donation was incorrect.
“We seem to have been the prey to fake stories ourselves. We’re doing our best!” The account representative said in a message to CNN on Wednesday.
So where did the account get that information? “I saw stories tweeted by a few small news accounts, citing anonymous sources,” said the representative.
Major outlets take up the story
The story really started on Monday, the day after the Visegrad 24 tweet was posted.
Again, it’s not true. Lucia Bekova, the fund’s public relations manager, said in an email sent to CNN on Wednesday that the fund did not make such an announcement.
Polish news may have confused the International Visegrad Foundation with the Visegrad 24 Twitter account. By Wednesday, the Polish news article was edited to remove references to the International Visegrad Foundation. Polish news representative Artur Salamonczyk said in an email Wednesday that he was “happy to remove the content” if CNN was aware that DiCaprio did not donate $ 10 million. ..
News media one after another The press cited Polish news as the main source behind their story that Dicaprio made a $ 10 million donation to Ukraine.
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