Someone—or, more likely, several people—at the Associated Press made an embarrassing mistake this weekend when writing up Nine Inch Nails’ headlining set at Philadelphia’s Made In America festival. The uncredited writer of the review notes that “NIN closed the night with a slow and smoky cover of Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt,’ which earned nonstop cheers from the crowd,” including a "Yeah, Trent!" from a burly man in the audience. That’s probably an apt description, except for, you know, “Hurt” being written and originally performed by NIN, and it was Cash who did its well-received cover shortly before his death. In short, it was a pretty big failure of editorial fact-checking, and whoever was responsible has spent the past 24 hours being mercilessly shamed.


To AP’s credit, the syndicate has since fixed the mistake on its wire and is now reporting that Cash “famously covered” “Hurt.”