Viral Claim: One of the negative implications of fake news is that it could have left someone like Alison Buttigieg into depressed by copyright violations and fake news around it.

Facts Check: True

Viral News in Social Media Twitter / Facebook / WhatsApp / Others Examples: 

My Stranglehold photo went viral with a completely ridiculous fake story accompanying it, and implications I fell into depression after I took it (seriously who comes up with this crap?!?) - not to mention the gross copyright violations. Sensationalism at its best - complete fiction so that people get more likes on their page. The photo with the fake story has been shared hundreds of thousands of times on various social media. I am getting inundated by hundreds and hundreds of messages asking me whether I am the “depressed photographer”. I have been tagged in LinkedIn with the fake story - that’s going to do wonders for my career. What a vile world we live in, full of stupid gullible people spreading #fakenews like crazy.

Facts Check Analysis:  Back in September 2013 Alison Buttigieg took some of the shots picture of a cheetah killing an impala (an antelope).

Though Alison Buttigieg was lauded for her photography, however on the negative side many negative stories were planed around the picture.

In the photo of an impala staring impassively into the camera while three cheetahs home in on the kill became fodder for the fake news machine recently. It was said that “on a story on Facebook about a mother impala (a medium-sized antelope) sacrificing herself to save her young.” This was not true and especially after the photographer.

Alison Buttigieg has come forward to clarify that the viral story is fake. Ms Buttigieg wrote on Facebook that the viral story violated copyright issues and posed a threat to her career.

Cheetah and impala story

I witnessed this Cheetah kill in September 2013 in the Maasai Mara, Kenya.  Narasha, the cheetah mom, was teaching her youngsters how to kill prey.  However they were a bit slow on the uptake and they were playing with the hapless Impala prey instead of killing it. Narasha, the cheetah mom is the one that is grabbing the impala by the neck in all the photos.   The youngsters practice some skills like pouncing and tripping which they get right, but they cannot seem to be able to get how to strangle the impala effectively.

In the end, after what seemed like an interminable eternity (but it was just a few minutes), the cheetah mom put the impala out of its misery, and the cats got to enjoy a nice meal.

Read the complete story in the below link by Alison Buttigieg

Cheetah Kill

Please note: all photos copyrighted by Alison Buttigieg and can only be used with a license. It is not allowed to download and share them. It is not allowed to alter the image in any manner including cropping or removal of watermark. I witnessed this Cheetah kill in September 2013 in the Maasai Mara, Kenya.

How fake news can affects someone

People put their life and story behind news, photography. However just for few persons personal goal the entire creativity can go off in just a few seconds. There are thousands of fake news websites around the world whose main purpose is to create a fake story out of any news. They replicate real news websites and make hoax out of real stories.

Due to the increased use of social media like facebook, twitter and whatsapp. This has given rise to the increase in fake news.

People start following the fake news and stories, often leading to discrediting the real person behind the actual news. In such a cases even a true story becomes and looks like a fake story.

Many fake news have negative effects in our society and causes disharmony in the society even. So it is important to be aware of the real and fake news.