CLAIM: Country singer Garth Brooks was “booed off stage” at the “123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. That claim was published by a website that labels its work as satire, but shared online by others as factual.
THE FACTS: The fabricated tale about the musician being forced to leave a stage “in shame” gained traction on Facebook and Twitter in recent days — catching the attention of even the Texas governor.
“Garth Brooks Booed Off Stage at 123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree,” reads the headline published June 23 on dunning-kruger-times.com.
In reality, that website is a part of America’s Last Line of Defense, a network of websites that creates fictional stories as satire, as its “About Us” page makes clear. The website’s domain refers to the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias concept in which people with little knowledge in a given area overestimate what they know.
Among other clues that the story was bogus was its assertion that the non-existent festival occurred in Hambriston, Texas — a town that also does not exist.
The fabricated story nevertheless was amplified by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who posted it on Twitter Sunday.
“Go woke. Go broke,” Abbott wrote. “Garth called his conservative fans. ‘a—holes.’”
The Republican deleted his tweet, though others shared screenshots of his post. Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During a question-and-answer event earlier this month, Brooks seemingly referred to conservative boycotts of Bud Light — over its partnership with a transgender influencer — when he said his new Nashville bar would “serve every brand of beer.”
“Our thing is this: If you come into this house, love one another,” he said. “If you’re an a—hole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway to go.”
The Associated Press has debunked other stories that originated from the same network of satirical sites but were spread as real.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
