A July 29 Instagram post (direct link, archived link) shows side-by-side photos of country musicians Blake Shelton and Jason Aldean.
“Blake Shelton Cancels $30 Million Project With CMT: 'Jason Is My Friend,’” reads the text beneath the photos.
The post was liked more than 20,000 times in six days. Similar versions accumulated more than 1,000 shares on Facebook and an additional 20,000 likes on Instagram.
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The claim originated on a website that posts satirical stories. Both the publisher of the website and Shelton's publicist called it untrue.
The controversy around Aldean’s song “Try That in a Small Town” has spawned several stories from the satirical website Dunning-Kruger Times.
The text appearing beneath the photos in the post is identical to the headline of a story on the website.
Dunning-Kruger Times is a subsidiary of the America's Last Line of Defense satirical network and describes itself as satire on its "About Us" page, saying, "Everything on this website is fiction.”
Individual stories, however, are not labeled as satire or fiction.
“I don’t publish the truth on any of the websites you’ll find on ALLOD,” Christopher Blair, the website’s creator, said in an email to USA TODAY.
Fact check: No, Luke Bryan did not remove videos...
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