Truth & Social Media (And How NOT To Get Scammed) – What Do You Think?

Truth and Social Media – 719woman.com

Have you ever read an article, watched a news program or seen a picture of someone in need that tugged at your heart and immediately made you want to help that person or organization? Have you ever donated money to a cause, not knowing exactly where the money ended up or later found out it was a scam? Have you ever tried to research a “story” to see if it was really true before you gave?

I think that by now most of us have heard the heartbreaking story about the little 3-year-old girl who in April, had been mauled by her grandfather’s dogs and was disfigured. During a visit to a Jackson, Mississippi Kentucky Fried Chicken she was told to leave. Grandma Kelly Mullin originally told WAPT-TV earlier this month that her granddaughter was told to leave KFC because the girl’s scarred face was “disrupting” our customers. The story went viral and earned the family $135,000 on a GoFundMe.com website, dedicated to raising money for the wounded child. Employees at that KFC received death threats and had items thrown at them through the drive-through window. But did it really happen?

WAS IT A HOAX?

According to CNN and other news agencies, the investigation was closed this week. (Investigations from KFC and a third-party found that they, the grandma and granddaughter, had never set foot in a Jackson KFC on May 15th when the incident allegedly happened.) The family insists it wasn’t a hoax but have since taken down the Facebook page and the GoFundMe.com campaign page has been suspended and refunds offered to those who donated. “In lieu of the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the ‘Victoria’s Victories’ online fundraising effort, GoFundMe has temporarily suspended the campaign until the full truth is made clear,” CEO Brad Damphousse said in a statement.

KFC said it will honor its $30,000 donation despite the fact the investigation found the ejection claim to be a hoax. And Dr. Frank Stile, a Las Vegas plastic surgeon, who said he would provide free surgery, remains committed to helping the 3-year-old.

Now when I first read the story I thought, oh that poor little girl, but I seriously questioned the KFC “kick-out.” The first thing I did was check out the doctor’s name and credentials mentioned in the article to see if that was true and if he was even a real doctor, which he is. On a personal note, I saw that he had previously been on the reality TV show, “Millionaire Matchmaker,” which made me think he likes publicity but hey, if he’s offering free help, who cares about his motivation? (Sometimes you do get publicity for doing good things.) He’s doing a good thing, but I did research him.

The next thing I did was look up the aunt’s personal Facebook page (she’s the one who created the ‘Victoria’s Victories’ site.) What I found interesting was there was only one mention on her page about her niece and that was a link to the money-asking page. I mean, typically when someone has a tragedy occur in their family, and they are a regular Facebook poster, they mention things like that. I’m not saying everyone shares their personal problems but it just seemed odd that their was no mention of the dog attack, hospital visits, prayer requests, etc. I admit, I’m a skeptic.

Now while there are a lot of people who feel outraged, there are others who think, in the long-run, it was ok because the little girl is getting help.

*The grandfather, Donald Mullins and his girlfriend, Rita Tompkins, were arrested for child endangerment.

OTHER RECENT HOAXES…

In the past several years there have been numerous social media hoaxes, which a lot of times end up on the news and in major publications, which have gone viral and raised money for the people making false claims. These stories play on our sympathy and willingness to help those in need, or to help “right” social injustices. Take for example, the waitress who claimed a racial slur had been written on a receipt or the waitress who claimed she didn’t get a tip because she was gay, both later being proved false, with the claimants getting money though from people who sympathized with their tale.

Not all false stories ask for money. Some just pass on untrue information, for whatever reason, and some are started off as “jokes” or opinions that are passed on as truth.

VIRAL “STORIES”

• *There was a Twitter tale of a Thanksgiving feud on a plane that was later described by the writer, Elan Gale, as a short story.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/elan-gale-airplane-feud-hoax-article-1.1535999

• *Child’s letter to Santa that detailed an Amazon.com link in crayon, actually written by grown-up comedian Zach Poitras.

http://mashable.com/2013/12/04/santa-amazon-letter-fake/

• *Linda Tirado wrote an essay on poverty that prompted $60,000 in donations to help her turn it into a book. (If you read her ENTIRE article, “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or poverty thoughts,” she does say at the end that not everything she writes about is strictly factually based on her life but rather impressionistic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/linda-tirado-book-deal_n_4532462.html

Note – I am NOT saying the 3 examples above were done as a “hoax,” but rather went viral because “we” passed them on as truths.

DOES VIRAL BEAT VERIFICATION?

“You are seeing news organizations say, ‘If it is happening on the Internet, that’s our beat,'” said Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. “The next step of figuring out whether it happened in real life is up to someone else.”

“The faster metabolism (of social media,) puts people who fact-check at a disadvantage,” says Ryan Grim, the Washington bureau chief for the Huffington Post, which reposted the fictional airplane tweets, the letter to Santa, and the poverty essay. “If you throw something up without fact-checking it, and you’re the first one to put it up, and you get millions and millions of views, and later it’s proved false, you still got those views. That’s a problem. The incentives are all wrong.”

John Cook, editor in chief of Gawker, which highlighted the essay on poverty says, “We are dealing with a volume of information that it is impossible to have the strict standards of accuracy that other institutions have.” He goes on to say that “readers can tell which content is serious and which is taken from the web without vetting. “We assume a certain level of sophistication and skepticism of our readers.”

URBAN LEGENDS BECOME TRUTH

When I was young, way before the Internet, we called stories that were passed around without actual factual knowledge, “urban legends.” I was on my high-school and college newspaper staff and actually had to verify articles I wrote about, with actual sources. Now a story gets read on the Internet and it’s passed around as if it’s “THE TRUTH.” Anyone read the article about how dangerous it is to give a dog water with ice? When I saw the first dozen or so articles, I immediately went to other sources, like petmd.com to see what they said and saw that it wasn’t true. Anyone read an article lately about a celebrity dying who in fact, is still alive and breathing? Last year I researched an article, and then later wrote about it, concerning a Goodwill CEO…the CEO the viral article wrote about wasn’t even employed by Goodwill and had never been a CEO there, but there were a TON of articles who repeated the false article before checking to see if he was real or not.

https://www.719woman.com/blog/do-goodwill-ceos-make-millions/

WHO’S AT FAULT?

So who is at fault for when we read “news” and discover what we just read, and perhaps passed on, isn’t even true? And does it even matter? As I said earlier, when I read hundreds and hundreds of comments, a lot of people don’t care if something is false, saying the “end justifies the means.” Am I happy for the little 3-year-old who is now getting help she may not have received if her grandmother hadn’t embellished an already tragic event, by making false claims? Yes, I’m happy she’s getting help. But no, I’m not happy about how it came about. And personally, while I applaud KFC for saying they will honor their $30,000 donation, it makes me think that only perpetuates the idea people can lie and get money for doing so.

Of course if you have the money or heart to donate, it’s your money and love to give as you see fit, so I’m not judging anyone who does so. But for those who get upset and more skeptical about future giving, well, I’m just saying, perhaps you should be a bit more “investigative” about who you’re donating to. Ultimately though, I wish our news sources actually checked their “news facts” before they put them on the air, the internet or newspapers. Of course we all know sensationalism sells and a lot of people are more interested in the “bad” things than the “good.” It does warm my heart when I see people give, makes me feel we do care and want to help others but when I give, and our family does, I do feel better knowing that it’s going to a “legit” cause.

SOURCES

It can be difficult knowing which charities and nonprofits are legitimate sometimes. Here’s just a few sites you can check out to see how they’ve been rated, where the money goes, how much the organization keeps, and other facts.

http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0074-giving-charity

http://www.guidestar.org/rxg/about-us/index.aspx

GoFundMe.com is a legitimate crowd functioning platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. On their page they say that when donating money, “donors should only contribute payments to GoFundMe users they personally know and trust. Unfortunately there is no way to 100% guarantee that a user’s GoFundMe donation page contains accurate and truthful information. As such, donors should not make payments to any pages or people unless they fully understand and trust the cause presented.”

SLANDER & VICTIMS

Does anyone even care or think about slander anymore? I see horrible things written, false accusations repeated, viral posts that haven’t been substantiated that are rampant, naming names and businesses of those accused. There’s always lots of those articles. But once something has been found out to be untrue, you’ll find a lot less articles saying so. Again, it’s the sensationalism. I think about those falsely called out. I mean for crying out loud, some of the KFC employees got death threats? How scared must they have been? Your name is besmirched, people look at you funny, it can affect your job. But the news cycles have gone on to “bigger and badder” things.

Of course you don’t know if anything I’ve written is true or not! Seriously though, I did do extensive research, which included going to both left and right-wing sources (newspapers, online sites and articles, news agencies, etc.) And if you’ve read anything here that is inaccurate, as always, I welcome corrections.

Long article, lots to think about and perhaps this topic doesn’t even matter to you. But I am curious…

What do you think?