Fake News On Couple Divorce
The first time I came across this article I saw it was posted on Facebook a couple of months ago. The main headline explained how a couple of over six decades was heading towards divorce after the wife found out that the husband was avoiding her by faking that he was deaf. I’m highly aware of how much fake news is put into social media, so I didn’t click on the link when I first saw it, but I also thought it would be a good one to evaluate because it seemed like a funny yet interesting article.
The fake news seemed to grab many peoples attention because it humored them to read the story. It already had hundreds of shares and comments as well as couples tagging their significant other to read about it. Worldnewsdailyreport.com was the website that this article was published on. The site even included some quotes from the couple to make the story seem more realistic and get people to believe it and spread the “news” to others.
After some research, I learned that this article about this couple was false. The couple in the picture are from Miami and were indeed facing divorce back in 2018 but not for the same reason as the other site claims. The original news story comes from “The Palm Beach Post”.
The couple was trying to get a divorce from one another because the wife claims her husband was lying, cheating, and stealing. The story was made public because it was up to the judge to split up their “550 million real estate empire.”
The website that published this fake news used a photo of real-life people but changed up their names and covered up the real story behind the pictures to catch the readers attention with some humor and spread it all over social media where is where many people tend to get their news from nowadays.
The names of this couple were changed from Lucille and Burt Handelsman to Barry and Dorothy Dawson. The story explains how “Barry” faked that he was deaf for “her [“Dorothy”] and his family” because he wanted to avoid listening to her. The article even quotes “Dorothy” and how she had to learn how to “communicate with her hands” in other words it took her two years to learn sign language.
When using any kind of social media whether its Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc we should always be aware that not everything we read is true or accurate. Many use social media as a way to spread rumors about things or even other people, even if it is not true and it is the same thing with fake news. Some people make a living by creating fake news so they will always try to make it as realistic as they can in hopes that we will believe the story and continue to share it with our friends and so on.
Works Cited
Fake News Story