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Exploiting a News Story:



First I want to start of explaining what exactly exploitation is and how it works. Exploitation is when someone uses a story of their own or a public story for their own personal gain. We see different cases of exploitation in the media every week and it's not always the same topic either. The sad part is people will use sad stories to scam money out of people.

I was browsing Facebook late the other night and came across a story that just didn't sit right with me.  A four year old boy Nolan Scully was diagnosed with terminal cancer and recently passed away in February. After the young boy fought for his life for a year sadly like I said before lost his life a year after being diagnosed. The mother was very active in sharing Nolan's story on social media. Constantly sharing updates and photos about her little boys battle with cancer.

Now here is where I got interested, in 2017 someone set up a donation page using pictures of Nolan and his story to make money for themselves. Pretending to sell raffle tickets to benefit the poor young boy. The mom was furious of course that someone was using the death of her young boy to make money for themselves. The mother spoke out about the issue first on Facebook warning close friends and family of the scam. Nolan's mother was furious she stated "Nolan deserved better than to be on the back of a criminal's fake fundraising ticket!"

The mother then reached out to ABC channel 7 in New York to do a story on the terrible scam and help stop the criminal. The reporter gathered more information regarding the bogus tickets. The criminal claimed that they "thought nothing of it" for using the preschoolers photos from his last 25 days of life. The criminal was promising donators prizes like gift cards, TV's, and iPads. When asked the mother told the news channel "They don't know what it's like to hold your 4 year old son while he's dying." the whole story leaves you with a sick feeling in your stomach.

Situations like this really blow me away when I see what people will do to get some extra cash. Like scamming off a young boy who lost his battle with childhood cancer. This is just one of many scams that happen in the world and ones like these just don't sit right with me.


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