This is an adapted extract from November 13 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes”.
Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff got off to a terrible start during his team’s game against the Houston Texans last week. He threw four interceptions at halftime, meaning he threw the ball and the other team caught it, gaining possession. His team finally took over, beating Texas 26-23.
At halftime, someone posted a surprising stat on social media – and it started viral.
“This is now Jared Goff’s 7th career game with at least 4 interceptions,” a user X with the nickname written by MisterCiv. “His record in these matches? 6-0.
Now, for those of you who don’t follow football, this is an extremely shocking, improbable and – ultimately – ridiculous claim. But it continued to circulate.
The original poster even shared what appeared to be a graphic from a sports stats website to back it up. That was apparently all that was needed for people to repeat this statement without question. Even people who should know better, like Pat McAfee, ESPN host and Aaron Rodgers, the conspiracy theorist New York Jets quarterback. You may remember him as one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s guys. research as a vice-presidential candidate.
Rodgers joined McAfee on his ESPN show the day after the Lions-Texans game. “I love Jared, I’m sure he’ll bounce back,” he told McAfee before referencing the viral stat.
“The astonishing statistic, however, is it a real statistic? He made four or more picks seven times and he won every one of those games? asked Rodgers. “Yes,” McAfee quickly responded.
You can probably tell where I’m going with this: the statistic was a complete lie. Just take it from the guy who invented it in the first place.
MisterCiv shared a clip of this moment from the McAfee show on his X account, accompanied by the message: “If you’ve ever wondered how easy it is to spread false information, I created this statistic while lying in bed at halftime of the game.”
Now this random social media user makes a good point. Fortunately, this was a completely harmless example of misinformation and the only consequence was that McAfee was embarrassed and had to backtrack. But what happened during this exchange between McAfee and Aaron? “Do your own research” Rodgers is essentially the entire story of our current information environment.
These are the kinds of people who do the “checking” in our current information environment.
This isn’t just a sports issue, it’s an issue that is reflected throughout our culture. Just look at American politics: Lies and disinformation about immigration and the economy spread on this kind of ground, where the anti-vaccine quarterback just repeats to millions of people on ESPN an unverified statistic he saw on Elon Musk’s website.
This is the problem in miniature of the huge problem we all face – a problem the rest of us have to figure out how to solve. Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know the answers, but if this situation has shown us anything, it’s that we’re going to have to find some.
Allison Detzel contributed.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
