Salvador Ruiz Professor Mary RHET 102 2/3/17 700 words The Power of Fake News

“ has died “peacefully” at the age of 78 after suffering a stroke while staying at the Ritz hotel in New York.”( Morgan Freeman 1). I remember reading this from the internet during my junior high year. The reaction it build up out of people was one to remember, and seeing how many people believed this fake news was even better. Better yet, seeing how people reacted to when they found out Morgan Freeman wasn’t dead was a better reaction than the rest. My purpose right now is to just show you how we can’t really rely on the internet for our news.

For the fake news article, the data you can clearly see are images of Morgan Freeman around the page, and a somewhat legit police statement about his, “death”. This could be a potential warrant, and it kind of gives you that, “this seems real”, vibe. Not only that, you also get a quote from Academy Award winner, , who was one of his closest friends and has also played in one of his top , “The Bucket List”. Here’s his comments about the ​ ​ news of his past friend, “no-one was like Morgan.For the rest of the world he was a guy we could all understand, empathize with and be enlightened by. We will all treasure his performances and remember him with fondness and enormous admiration.” ( Morgan Freeman

2). The more you start reading and getting into it, it finally settles in, “Maybe Morgan Freeman is dead, I mean it’s the internet. Why would they be wrong about this?”. I almost believed it because it’s such an emotional statement from his friend. What makes the situation seem worse than it is, is the people posting stuff online about his death and hyping it up even more than it should be. You have people making Twitter post, Facebook comments, and montage videos of

Freeman’s career in a five minute about all his movies. Once one person sees that, then immediately someone shares those things and spreads like wildfire.

From what I remember, we believed this information for about two weeks straight, until we finally saw the news about it being a hoax, “Morgan Freeman is not dead, despite what

Twitter may think. The confusion came largely from the real life death of former South African leader Nelson Mandela. He passed away on Thursday after a long illness that included a lung ​ ​ infection. Mandela was 95” ( Francis 1). Morgan Freeman did play in the movie “Invictus”, his role throughout the film was being, “Nelson Mandela”, and a strong role he played too. Here’s a bit of the plot, “The film tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa's rugby team to help unite their country...to achieve his unrealistic goal of the Springboks winning the World Cup, even against such rugby powerhouses the

All-Blacks representing New Zealand. Mandela tries to inspire Pienaar to lead by example, much like Mandela has himself” ( IMDB 2). In all fairness the two do look similar and Morgan played his role really well, but that isn’t an excuse to write false information especially about a death of someone.

Yes this is somewhat real/fake news, but the point is that the web got the person mixed up with another person and once someone made a comment about Mr Freeman dying, then that's when people jump to conclusions. Don’t trust everything you see online, but as you can tell we somehow manage to find a way to let the internet fool us. From the article, you read more about how this hoax was either accidental or on purpose.

Work cited:

"Morgan Freeman Actor, Dies at 78." Linkbeef. N.p., 01 Oct. 2015. Web. 14 Feb. 2017. ​ ​ Nathan-francis. "Morgan Freeman Not Dead: Twitter Confuses Actor With Nelson Mandela." The Inquisitr News. N.p., 05 Dec. 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2017. ​ ​ "Plot Summary." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2017. ​ ​