The award wining -film Citizen Kane directed, produced, screenplay and acted by Orson Welles, who played also the main character Charles Foster Kane, is considered one of the greatest films of all times. It addresses power, corruption, and vanity of a newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane, who became one of the richest and most popular men in America and then falls in disgrace.

Kane’s final words “Rosebud” and the snow globe refer to the traumatic childhood memory of when he as an eight-year old was torn away from his family in snowy day in Colorado to be sent to a boarding school, which marked him for the rest of his life. The scrip is the journey of how Kane becomes very powerful but is unable to reciprocate love. When Charles reached adulthood and inherited his fortune, he did not know at first what to do, but was full of idealism and recognized that if he had not been rich he would have been a better man. Although he could buy everything he wanted with his fortune, he chose a selfish path always imposing his own terms on others and manipulating public opinion, for which he paid a very high price losing his first and second wives, son, and friends.

“Rosebud” the name on the sled that he was playing with when he was separated from his parents represented critical times on his life when he confronted major loses: first the lost of his mother and father as a child, then when he lost his chance to become a governor and maybe President due to the scandal of his affair with Susan Alexander, who will become his second wife. Ironically, at first, he did not care for money, and had dropped out from many Ivy League Schools, including Cornell, and had no clear goals until he became a publisher for “The New York Daily Inquirer”. He made many changes so that the news could go out 24/7, hired the best reporters at the time, and included gossip and scandalous articles of corruption. He also published his own declaration of principles: “I will provide the people of the city with a daily paper that will focus on the truth,” without special interests, and “will tireless champion for the rights of the citizens.” Later on, however, he betrayed his own principles, and became corrupted and driven only by his obsession for power and fame, creating his own reality with false news. His paper manipulated mass opinion, when his ambition was exposed many people abandoned him while he continued with misinformation and fake news manipulating others. His friend Leland and his second wife Susan left him, as they could no longer accept how he was dishonest and manipulated the truth constantly for his own gain. Driven to lonesomeness by his own ambition, he did not trust or believe in anybody else. At the end, he grew disappointed of the world and built a world of his own in Xanadu, where he died in isolation.

The issue of fake news and how people can be manipulated by misinformation stroke me as it is still a major concern in our times with the advent of social media. Fake news spread fast through social media confounding the truth due to the lack of filtering of misinformation since anyone can post statements without validating the information at any given time to manipulate mass opinion even if the information posted is fake. To avoid falling on those scams, it is critical to be able to separate facts from fake news and be aware of the sources of information that can be reliable versus those that just manipulate others with misinformation to manipulate public opinion.