I see a couple take-aways here. The first is that it hardly matters what the "real story" is (about an endeavor/person/etc), it's what the media reports the story as being --- and that's the story that is going to cause the most outrage/grief, and sell the most advertisements. So if the story is outrageous on the face of it, that story is most likely not the "real story".

The other is that if you're going to say/do anything substantial (these days/online), you're going to need very thick skin to withstand the barrage of verbal and textual hate that will be directed at you by "the internet".