How America covered the Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy feud

Rooney accused Vardy of leaking stories about her to the media.

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Coleen Rooney caused an online sensation after alleging Rebekah Vardy’s Instagram account was the source of leaked stories about her in the media.

The women, the wives of two of England’s best-known football stars in Wayne Rooney and Jamie Vardy, were embroiled in a very public row following Wednesday’s controversy.

Rooney revealed she had spent months planting fake stories on her private Instagram account, blocking everyone but Vardy from seeing them so she could then prove the source of the leaks.

Vardy issued a furious denial while a spokesman for Rooney said it was “irrefutable” the leaks came from “one account, and one account only”.

Interest in the shock whodunnit, imaginatively labelled #WagathaChristie online, has stretched far beyond the UK’s borders, with news outlets around the world informing their readers of Rooney’s sleuthing prowess.

Nowhere has been more engrossed than the US, where the story has been picked up by its most prestigious newspaper, the New York Times.

The Gray Lady, as the venerated paper is called, said Rooney has “largely lived in the shadow of her far more famous husband” but she “revealed a different side of herself” with Wednesday’s revelations.

Rooney is a “detective who ran her own sting operation to expose the person who had betrayed details about her family life” to the media, according to the Times.

And the fallout from the controversy has revived “the topic of ‘WAG’ culture”, The Times said, explaining the term as “the shorthand given to the circus atmosphere that used to surround the wives and girlfriends of the players on the English national team”.

In a separate piece in which it asked a reporter from its London bureau to explain the furore to Americans, the Rooney-Vardy feud was described as “the story everyone needs”.

The Times journalist, Elizabeth Paton, added: “The internet has been breaking here since news of the spat first surfaced; it appears people can’t — or won’t — think of anything else. Ms Rooney is being heralded as a new national heroine.”

Another of the US’s distinguished outlets, the Washington Post, covered the story and had the added incentive of Rooney playing for its local Major League Soccer team, DC United.

Under a headline describing the incident as “War Of The Wags”, the Post, best known for its investigation of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, said Rooney mounted a “five-month social media sting operation” to catch the alleged culprit.

Away from America’s broadsheets, the tabloid New York Daily News said Rooney had “smoked out” Vardy.

It compared the ruse to a similar one carried out by the National Basketball Association (NBA), which sent out slightly different memos to its teams to see who was providing information to a high-profile journalist.

USA Today provided its readers with a break down of what happened, informing its audience “one of the great soccer stories of recent memory” had taken place.

“This story has everything: A mystery, an investigation, a surprise twist, a denial. It’s got it all”, the outlet said.

E! News, one of the biggest entertainment outlets in the US, said the incident was the “Internet’s Most Buzzed-About Feud” in the headline of its online story.

It noted that “before today, these two women were otherwise entirely unknown in the realm of American pop culture” but now “Coleen and Rebekah are now on everyone’s radar thanks to Coleen’s expert sleuthing skills”.

And it was not just America which was fascinated with the controversy.

Germany’s biggest newspaper, Bild, also covered the story, as did outlets in Australia, Norway and India.

NEW YORK (AP) — Mexican fundraisers can now solicit donations on GoFundMe, the company announced Tuesday, as the crowdfunding giant expands into what it hopes is the first of more untapped Latin American markets to follow.

Mexico marks the 20th country serviced by GoFundMe. The for-profit platform is eyeing new international targets now that the unprecedented strain of crowdfunding campaign levels spawned by COVID-19 has eased to pre-pandemic figures, CEO Tim Cadogan told The Associated Press.

Mexico's status as one of the world's largest 15 economies and a close U.S. partner made it a logical fit, said Cadogan, as did on-the-ground interest evidenced by high search volume for GoFundMe and user attempts to establish in-country campaigns.

The company finds that its generally popular appeals for help with medical expenses and emergency aid are also common in Mexico — a country with relatively high out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures and a history of severe natural disasters.

Cadogan pointed to Category 5 Hurricane Otis' deadly touchdown last fall on the southern Pacific coast and the resort city of Acapulco. The GoFundMe community raised about $1.5 million to help recovery and rebuilding efforts, Cadogan said. But Mexicans themselves could not launch campaigns.

“If we had been available then, I think more people would have been able to avail themselves of the service," Cadogan said.

Mexico remains a country where about half the population lives in poverty, and where any unexpected expense — most often medical, but also related to events as terrifying as kidnapping or extortion — can prompt appeals for funds.

United States users had previously circumvented the geographic restrictions by opening GoFundMe campaigns on behalf of relatives in Mexico or other Latin American countries, according to Jeremy Snyder, a bioethicist who researches medical crowdfunding. Snyder expects that the expansion will ease the flow of money between users from the two countries, where many families have ties to both sides of the border.

“It’s just more evidence of the spread and normalization of crowdfunding,” Snyder said of Tuesday’s announcement.

Likeminded networks already exist in Mexico. Founded in 2016, Donadora first supported creative industries before refocusing on personal causes. Some 527,000 donors have given about $14 million, or 239 million Mexican pesos, to more than 6,800 campaigns, according to the company website. Donadora keeps 6.5% of donations before releasing the funds.

But none have the reach of GoFundMe. Cadogan said GoFundMe is well positioned because of its strong brand awareness, advantageous pricing structure and security protections. GoFundMe takes 2.9% of every transaction plus another five Mexican pesos. The company also guarantees full refunds of any donation amount for users who successfully file claims within one year of making a payment.

Junueth Mejia Martell, Hispanics in Philanthropy’s deputy director of digital philanthropy and innovation, welcomed the move. She said the nonprofit, which seeks to bridge gaps in philanthropic funding for Latino causes, has been building a culture of collective giving alongside other platforms. GoFundMe’s expansion provides yet another avenue for crowdfunding.

“This strengthens the muscle of generosity, of philanthropy, in Mexico,” she said.

Financial technology startup Stripe will serve as the online payment provider. Fundraisers must be at least 18 years old, share a Mexican postal address, have a Mexican bank account and submit their federal taxpayer registry number.

The rollout will inform the company's consideration of other Latin American countries where GoFundMe currently does not have a presence, Cadogan said.

“We would love to serve more markets,” Cadogan told AP. "But we want to understand them carefully and really see how, in this case, our first Latin American market plays out.”

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

GoFundMe Chief Executive Officer Tim Cadogan poses for a photo in Altadena, Calif. on Friday, April 19, 2024. Mexican fundraisers can now solicit donations on GoFundMe, the company announced Tuesday, under an expansion that the crowdfunding giant hopes is the first of additional entrances into untapped Latin American markets. Mexico marks the 20th country serviced by GoFundMe. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)