CLAIM: Samsung Withdraws $1 Billion Sponsorship from Paris Olympics.
SOURCE: Social Media
VERDICT: False
The iconic Eiffel Tower in all her majesty, the Seine river flowing and thousands of the world’s elite athletes all gathered to compete in the 2024 edition of the Olympics Games. If the organisers of the opening ceremony were aiming to make people sit up and take notice, they certainly did.
The world had been eager to see how Paris would merge its iconic charm with the spirit of the Olympics.
However, the opening ceremony has been mired in controversy from mainstream to social media.
On Facebook, one of the accounts complaining over the ceremony posted; ‘The blatantly paganism and satanism in the Olympics should cause us to pray and preach’.
On X, there were calls to boycott the games, ‘Please join me in a full boycott of the 2024 Olympics. Drop a like on this post if you’re with me.
#BoycottOlympics2024’.
An American company, C Spire, announced that it will be pulling advertising from the Olympics:
‘We were shocked by the mockery of the Last Supper during the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. C Spire will be pulling our advertising from the Olympics.’
But, has one of the Olympics’ biggest sponsors, Samsung, pulled its funding from the games as widely claimed?
The claims are on Facebook here and here, as well as on X here and here.
All these claims are based on an article from SpaceXmania.
The article claims that, ‘The catalyst for Samsung’s withdrawal was a controversial performance during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The ceremony featured drag queens and dancers in a segment that some viewers felt resembled Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” This performance drew immediate backlash from conservative audiences and religious groups, who accused the Olympics of promoting a “woke” agenda at the expense of traditional values.’
Unfortunately, for those reposting this article as fact, they missed SpaceXmania’s tag on the article as satire.
SpaceXMania has a disclaimer on its website that spells out its policy on satire:
Watch out for satire
Satire is not considered mis/disinformation, although it has been linked to ‘confusion among readers with what appear to be typical news articles but are in fact fabricated stories’.
Satirical news is not grouped together with false information as they serve very different purposes. Fake news is ‘news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers’. Satirical news is ‘factually incorrect, but the intent is not to deceive but rather to call out, ridicule, or expose behavior that is shameful, corrupt, or otherwise “bad”’.
Conclusion
The claim that ‘Samsung Withdraws $1 Billion Sponsorship from Paris Olympics’ has been rated as false. It is based on a clearly marked satirical article that has been mistaken for factual news. Although, the original article is marked ‘satire’, the claim has been spread by other players, especially on social media, as fact morphing satire into misinformation.
