Did the Academy of Country Music place a lifetime ban on entertainer Jack Black after his bandmate made comments about the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump? No, that's not true: The false report was posted on a self-proclaimed "fake news" website. There also is no evidence that the Academy of Country Music proclaimed that Black was banned.
The bogus report appeared to originate in an article (archived here) on the SpaceXMania site on July 19, 2024. The article, titled "Breaking: Academy of Country Music Issues Lifetime Ban on Jack Black, 'He Showed His True Colors,'" opened:
In a dramatic turn of events, the Academy of Country Music (ACM) has announced a lifetime ban on actor and musician Jack Black, citing his controversial behavior and remarks during a recent concert in Sydney, Australia. The decision has sparked widespread debate within the entertainment industry, with many questioning the boundaries of free speech and the role of artists in political discourse.
This is what the post looked like on SpaceXMania at the time of writing:
(Source: SpaceXMania screenshot taken on Tue Aug 6 16:00:41 2024 UTC)
The article followed Black's announcement that his comedy rock band Tenacious D, a duo with musician Kyle Gass, would cancel the remainder of their tour. The move came after Gass, whose birthday was being celebrated during the band's July 14, 2024, concert in Sydney, Australia, made an onstage comment, apparently saying that his birthday wish was "Don't miss Trump next time" (archived here).
Lead Stories did searches using keywords on Google and Google News, visible here and here, respectively, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
Lead Stories also searched the Academy of Country Music's website for mention of a "ban" relating to Black and Tenacious D (archived here and here, respectively). There was no evidence that such a ban exists. We reached out to the organization for comment on the claim and will update this story with any relevant response.
The article that makes the claim is labeled as "Satire," as seen in the screenshot included above in the top left-hand corner. SpaceXMania's "About Us" page (archived here) explains that the website publishes satirical content:
Welcome to our website, owned and operated by Funky Productions LLC. We are a team of writers and editors based in New York, USA. Our mission? To bring you the freshest fake news, some sassy analysis, and a good dose of satire, all rolled into one crazy concoction that orbits around Elon Musk and everything that's lighting up the viral/trending charts.
The website also appears to use artificial intelligence to generate its content. Lead Stories ran the first two paragraphs of the article making the bogus report through the Hive AI-Generated Text Detection tool. The results stated that it is 99.9 percent likely that the text contained AI-generated text, as shown in the screenshot below:
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Tue Aug 6 15:43:40 2024 UTC)
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to SpaceXMania can be found here.
