Ricky Martin's death hoax is media fabrication at its most extreme

"Like Mark Twain”, Morgan Freeman is constantly reading that he’s deceased, despite, at the age of 77, being very much alive.

"Unable to answer tweets fell off a mountain in Austria, all over red rover,” Russell Crowe joked on Twitter following a hoax in 2010. "Don't know how I got there, but the media are never wrong. G'Bye.[sic]”

"Bloody hell,” Russell Brand wrote on hearing that he no longer existed in 2012. "I better cancel the milk.”

Unlike Brand, Crowe or Freeman, however, Ricky Martin’s false death report wasn’t pulled together from hysterical fan tweets or a dubious looking news blog. Instead, the Latino singer found himself the victim of an entirely fabricated news report on YouTube, complete with grief-stricken comments definitely not from his family and a fake statement from Ian Thorpe – the recently "out” Australian swimmer – about a child the pair had supposedly reared.

Those up on Australian tabloid gossip (no?) would perhaps be aware of the equally false reports that Martin had mentored Thorpe before he came out as gay during a television interview with Michael Parkinson last year.

In fact, Thorpe recently revealed that they had never met, let alone enjoyed a life-changing romantic tryst.

Famous people die all the time on the internet.

"Like Mark Twain”, Morgan Freeman is constantly reading that he’s deceased, despite, at the age of 77, being very much alive.

"Unable to answer tweets fell off a mountain in Austria, all over red rover,” Russell Crowe joked on Twitter following a hoax in 2010. "Don't know how I got there, but the media are never wrong. G'Bye.[sic]”

"Bloody hell,” Russell Brand wrote on hearing that he no longer existed in 2012. "I better cancel the milk.”

Unlike Brand, Crowe or Freeman, however, Ricky Martin’s false death report wasn’t pulled together from hysterical fan tweets or a dubious looking news blog. Instead, the Latino singer found himself the victim of an entirely fabricated news report on YouTube, complete with grief-stricken comments definitely not from his family and a fake statement from Ian Thorpe – the recently "out” Australian swimmer – about a child the pair had supposedly reared.

Those up on Australian tabloid gossip (no?) would perhaps be aware of the equally false reports that Martin had mentored Thorpe before he came out as gay during a television interview with Michael Parkinson last year.

In fact, Thorpe recently revealed that they had never met, let alone enjoyed a life-changing romantic tryst.

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Even worse, however, is the footage of a horrific car crash its creator claimed Martin had perished in on New Year’s Day, with a red ring around a vehicle they falsely asserted he was travelling in. So far, over 300,000 impressionable people have viewed the video.

Not that Martin seemed to mind, however. He was already in heaven.

(independent.co.uk)