During the 2014 Brazil World Cup, Cristiano Ronaldo took the field in the Portugal vs. United States match with a strange ‘Z’-shaped mark shaved into the right side of his head. The Daily Mail wasted no time: it claimed it was a tribute to the surgical scar of Erik Ortiz, a barely one-year-old boy from Villanueva de la Sangra, Toledo, who suffered from an illness that required a costly cranial operation.
The problem is that Erik had never been operated on. His mother, Cristina Cruz, had to come forward and publicly deny it through Facebook before the rumor kept growing. What was real — and was almost buried under the media scandal — was something else: CR7 had learned about the case through a mutual acquaintance and offered to cover part of the treatment, whose cost was around 85,000 dollars. The medical team was still looking for a solution when the article was published, in June 2014.
A story of genuine generosity, turned into fake news. And it was the mother of a sick baby who had to step in to correct it. 🙏
