According to The Daily Wire, the magazine's most viral video ever, which featured heart-wrenching images of a starving polar bear, perpetuated the narrative that the animal's imminent death was caused by climate change. However, the climate change aspect of the story is void of any real evidence.   Mittermeier has now explained the climate change deception and fake news stunt National Geographic pulled in a piece titled "Starving-Polar-Bear Photographer Recalls What Went Wrong" for the magazine's August issue.

"Photographer Paul Nicklen and I are on a mission to capture images that communicate the urgency of climate change. Documenting its effects on wildlife hasn't been easy," she wrote. "With this image, we thought we had found a way to help people imagine what the future of climate change might look like. We were, perhaps, naive. The picture went viral — and people took it literally." So basically, in summation, Mittermeier admitted that the images of the bony, emaciated polar bear were meant to sound an alarm about climate change, though now she is complaining that people took the image "literally" when that was the exact fake news message she wished to convey.