A few days ago I posted about an RT report that soccer star Cristiano Ronald had donated $1.5 million to Gaza. I posited that it was likely fake news because we had received no official word about it from Ronaldo or his club, plus the fact he has been the subject of previous fake claims around supposedly supporting the palestinians and being anti-Israel.
We now have confirmation that it was completely fake (auto-translated from French).
Several foreign alternative media, as well as hundreds of Internet users, repeat the information that footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has donated $ 1.5 million to Palestine. Contacted by LCI, the agency Gestifute de Mendes indicates that it is a false information.
These media, for the most part, build their article around a tweet published by an NGO on May 16. Nigeria-based Onwadan’s charity foundation, which runs as a non-charitable organization “helping orphans and widows around the world,” writes: “Cristiano Ronaldo is donating $ 1.5 million to Palestine. Check out where each person is known to be, you can not reach out to needy orphans and stay the same, maybe you will not change lives, but a touch of affection can make you smile again. “
Where does this NGO get its information? Contacted by LCI on Monday, the association was not able to tell us: “We saw the info on the Internet so we copied it and shared” they answered. Asked about the truth of this donation, the NGO added: “Oh, we do not really know.”
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To shed light on this story, LCI contacted the agency that manages the interests of Cristiano Ronaldo, Gestifute, owned by Jorge Mendes. A spokeswoman denied any such gift: “This is a false story, like many other stories about Cristiano Ronaldo” we were told.
Not how the original source of the “report”, an NGO, admits that it did not really know whether it was true or not, yet shared it anyway. Agenda, much?
Hat tip: Laurent.
