14 DAY TRIAL // In recent years, Morgan Freeman has been many times in the news but, as fans must know, many of those instances when he made headlines were hoaxes. The same applies for an alleged statement on the Newtown shooting making the rounds right now.
Late last week, 20-year-old Adam Lanza went into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and opened fire, killing 20 children, 6 adults and himself afterwards.
As the nation mourned, a statement claiming to have come straight from the actor on the tragedy started making the rounds online, getting a lot of traction especially on social media, Twitter and Facebook.
It basically blamed the sensationalist media for the killings, saying it had turned crime into celebrity, thus making all kinds of disturbed individuals want to “go down” as celebrities.
A rep for the actor is now saying for The Wrap that the actor did not issue such a statement, and that it’s a hoax. They’re trying to find out where it might have originated.
In fact, voices online say, this was actually the first hint that the statement was a hoax: while the words were attributed to Freeman, not one single media outlet could trace them back to him, either in an interview or press release.
A statement doesn’t just come out of nowhere, but this seemed to be the case with Morgan’s comment on the Newtown shooting.
“You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here’s why … It’s because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine?” the statement said.
It went on to blame the media for turning the authors of these tragedies, real monsters, into celebrities, and to urge all those looking to help the victims’ families in any way to just “turn off the news.”
You can read the complete faux statement here.