You remember that angry orange guy that kept calling everything fake news and how the media is irresponsible and even at times, the enemy of the people? Well, I don't know if he was right about them being the enemy of the people so much as they are businesses that have a certain demographic that they are selling a product to, but I do know that they are not very good at their jobs. They are supposed to be giving us at least some semblance of factual information but this latest Leonardo DiCaprio story that the media immediately latched onto is just another example of how virtually no news organization does any sort of of homework or checks to see if what they are saying is even true at all before they print it.
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I have nothing personally against DiCaprio but I do know that he is a darling of the left because of his rather hypocritical push in the eco-game where he pleads with the world to reduce their carbon footprint all the while shooting around the world in a private jet that produces more CO2 emissions in one trip than your family car does in a year. There are a lot of other people like him as far as this hypocrisy is concerned: I would say that almost everyone in that game is a hypocrite and is only doing it for their own benefit.
This isn't about Leo's "do as I say, not as I do" ways though. This is about how irresponsible and dumb the media is.
Hundreds if not thousands of news organizations all around the world including US networks like The Independent, Entertainment Tonight, The Washington Examiner, and various other more minor local stations were just gushing about how Leo is continuing his efforts to save the world with his $10 million donation to the efforts going on in the Ukraine.
There's just one problem with this story though and that is that it never happened
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It was originally reported by a Polish newspaper that stated that DiCaprio has a Ukrainian grandmother and therefore made a rather sizeable donation to the Ukrainian cause.
As it turns out, not only did Leo not make this donation, but he also has no family ties to The Ukraine either. Someone out there in the news world just made the entire story up and all the other news organizations, who are supposed to be providing us with real information, didn't even bother to check to see if it is was even true.
Although it is unclear who it is in the media that eventually decided that "hey wait a second, we are journalists, shouldn't we verify this information?" Someone did and when they contacted the charity in question, TheVisegrad Fund, their representatives said this
"We are not aware, neither do we have any information about Leonardo DiCaprio donating USD 10 million to Ukraine.
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All that these news organizations that were so excited to print this information had to do was to contact the organization in question but none of them even bothered to do so.
This is a relatively minor thing too folks. As far as war is concerned, $10 million is a paltry sum even though to most people, including and especially me, this is an astronomically huge amount of money.
The point of all this is that if they will so eagerly print something like this without verifying it, what other nonsense are we being fed on a daily basis in regards to something that actually matters? I would suggest that most of what we are spoon-fed by the ravenous media are lies - either intentional or just a lazy accident like this one.
This fake story of course, quickly went viral and people were Tweeting the praises of DiCaprio and his spokesperson or people didn't correct anyone either. Why would they? It only helps their boss and to this day I would imagine that most people probably still believe that the donation actually happened. For all we know it might have been DiCaprio's own team that started the rumor. If you do a web search on this story most of the results still have the story up as if it was something that actually happened even though they are well aware of the fact that it did not.
I have no ill will towards Leo because of this and just like the rest of the world I will likely look forward to whatever movie project he decides to work on next. In the meantime my general disdain towards basically all media continues since they time and time again prove that they can't be trusted even with puff-pieces like this one.
