No, Country Music Hall of Fame didn't disqualify Taylor Swift; it's stolen satire | Fact check

Chris Mueller, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Country Music Hall of Fame disqualified Taylor Swift from consideration

An April 20 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows images of musician Taylor Swift and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.

"Country Music Hall of Fame Disqualifies Taylor Swift's 'Bubble Gum Music' From Consideration," reads text below the images.

The post was shared more than 500 times in five days.

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Our rating: False

The claim originated on a satirical website. Swift has not been inducted, but there has been no announcement that she won't be considered in the future.

Claim originated on a satirical website

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in downtown Nashville opened in 1967 and currently has 152 members – Swift, though, is not one of them. Patty Loveless, Bob McDill and Tanya Tucker were the most recent inductees.

However, there is no evidence of any announcement declaring Swift is no longer eligible for induction, as the post claims.

"The museum did not issue a statement about Taylor’s eligibility," Jeremy Rush, a spokesperson for the museum, told USA TODAY.

The inductees are selected "by an anonymous panel of voters" chosen by the Country Music Association, the industry’s trade organization. Through a licensing agreement with the association, the museum displays bronze plaques commemorating membership in its Hall of Fame Rotunda.

The Country Music Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY.

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Swift has been a supporter of the museum, Rush said.

The museum has a dedicated space for educational programs called the Taylor Swift Education Center, which features three classrooms, a videoconference lab and an interactive gallery.

In April, the museum announced it had updated its display in the education center with several items from early in Swift's career, including "key musical instruments used by Swift that illustrate her origins in country music," a news release says.

The education center opened in 2013 and was "made possible through a generous donation from Swift to the museum's capital campaign, which doubled the size of the nonprofit cultural organization," the news release says.

The claim originated on a satirical website called The Dunning-Kruger Times, a part of America's Last Line of Defense satirical network. The website labels itself as satire on its "About Us" page, indicating, "Everything on this website is fiction."

The Facebook post is an example of what could be called "stolen satire," where claims written as satire and presented that way originally are reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Claim Taylor Swift disqualified is stolen satire | Fact check

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