Crossing Broad
On Monday, there was some ambiguity over whether or not the Eagles had decided to go to the White House. Were they even invited? Clay Travis, Jake Tapper, Adam Schefter, and others clarified later in the day:
This is my understanding as well, not sure how this rumor got started https://t.co/kyv1OJ9OOx
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 24, 2025
To those wondering: Eagles sources say the team is planning on visiting the White House this off-season and looks forward to receiving its invitation. pic.twitter.com/G6b76Ve64Q
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 24, 2025
The reason for the hubbub is because the Eagles Nation Twitter account shared on Sunday a three-week old article from a British tabloid called The Sun. Written before the Super Bowl was even played, and citing a “well-placed insider,” it was noted that “recent discussions between the players and the Eagles front office resulted in a ‘massive no’ when asked if they would accept an invitation to the nation’s capital.”
If you know anything about The Sun, it’s largely regarded as shit. It’s one of the least-credible media outlets in the UK, but the average American probably is not familiar with foreign rags. Maybe that’s the case with whomever runs Eagles Nation, which is one of those large aggregator accounts. They dig up some interesting Eagles content and amplify worthwhile media to a following of more than 229,000 people, but sometimes when the source material is sketchy, or old, it backfires and causes, in this case, partisan hysteria.
As of Tuesday morning, the tweet that kicked everything off had 14.4 million impressions and was reposted more than 10,000 times:
One of the things you may have noticed is that all the sports reporters debunked this thing right around the same time. Schefter, Rapoport, John Clark, Dave Zangaro, etc – they all had the Eagles side of the report around 5:45 p.m., which suggests that someone with the Birds wanted to get this out to the media to put an end to the delirium. You take control of the narrative and shut it down. And by the way, if Jake Tapper and Clay Travis are reporting the same thing, you know it’s true, because those guys being in sync is more rare than a transparent Joel Embiid injury update.
The main issue at play is that there’s no oversight for any of this. “You are the media now,” as Elon Musk said, but the problem is that 99.999% of people on the planet Earth have no journalism background. There are a ton of large accounts that are operated by fans and they receive money for engagement, which incentivizes getting as many impressions as possible, accuracy of the information be damned. They plagiarize and rip quotes and retweet and amplify stories to people who don’t have media literacy, which is a fancy way of saying that the recipients of this content don’t possess any kind of training that helps them analyze information to find out...
