WIP host duped by fake Twitter account into reporting fake Flyers trade

John Barchard isn’t the first sports talker duped by trolls, and certainly won’t be the last.

Barchard, filling in for 94.1 WIP midday host Jon Ritchie on Monday ahead of the 3 p.m. NHL trade deadline, broke in after a commercial break to announce a blockbuster trade involving the Flyers.

“We have a major trade, actually, with the Philadelphia Flyers, as they have acquired Roman Josi from the Nashville Predators,” Barchard announced on air. “This one may hurt a little bit — in exchange for a 2021 first-round pick and Shane Gostisbehere. Out of here.”

Barchard plucked the news from Twitter. But instead of reading it on the Flyers’ official Twitter account, he was duped by a fake account unverified by the social media platform.

Fortunately, WIP producer James Seltzer immediately corrected Barchard, who to his credit immediately owned up to the mistake and spent the rest of the show hearing it from callers.

“Oh my God, I did get had. … I’ve never had that happen since I started working here," Barchard said. “Well, congratulations. It made it all the way to the air.”

Also mentioning the fake Josi-Gostisbehere trade was 97.5 The Fanatic afternoon host Mike Missanelli, who discussed it to open his show Monday. Unlike Barchard, Missanelli couched the potential deal as a “discussion” and a “rumor,” but did discuss it as if the deal was something either team was actually considering.

“I don’t know how realistic this is for the Flyers or not,” Missanelli told listeners, “but if they get him, they’re certainly serious about making a run for the Stanley Cup playoffs.”

“I can’t say I am always on social media, but I’m amazed on how often I am trading [Gostisbehere],” Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher told reporters Monday. “We weren’t looking to move him. Teams have called me on him.”

The Flyers did add center/winger Derek Grant and center/winger Nate Thompson in separate deals praised by my colleague Marcus Hayes, who wrote it’s an indicator the Flyers think they can play deep into the playoffs this season.

There is a long history of comedians and their fans pranking media personalities. Former ABC News anchor Peter Jennings was fooled during O.J. Simpson’s infamous police chase in 1994 by a man who claimed to be an eyewitness (Jennings was informed on air about the “totally farcical call” by current Sunday Night Football announcer Al Michaels). SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt was punked by a man pretending to be former Eagles running back Brian Westbrook back in 2010.

And former ESPN host Dan Patrick was tricked into putting a man pretending to be infamous Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman on air for a live phone interview back in 2003. The man turned out to be an impostor, and gave himself away by asking Patrick, “Do you like Howard Stern’s butt cheese?”

Amused, Patrick paused for a second, looked at the camera and simply said, “We’ve been had. That was not Steve Bartman.”

High Noon, the highbrow studio show shot like a movie and hosted by Pablo Torre and Bomani Jones, is being canceled by ESPN, the network confirmed Monday night.

ESPN cited poor ratings in its decision to nix the show, telling Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand that High Noon was “a smart and nuanced show” that never really caught on with viewers. The show will end in March, and replacing it in the network’s 4 p.m. slot will be Jalen & Jacoby, hosted by NBA analyst Jalen Rose and ESPN producer David Jacoby.

So what will happen to Torre and Jones? That remains uncertain, though Jones will continue to host his podcast, The Right Time, and you can probably expect to see both on studio shows such as Highly Questionable and Around the Horn. The Washington Post’s Ben Strauss reports that both remain in negotiations with ESPN about new roles.

Torre wrote on Instagram that he found out his show was being canceled at the hospital Monday night while his wife, Elizabeth Doherty, was giving birth to their first child, a daughter they named Violet.

• Penn National Senior VP Eric Schippers had a lot of people on social media scratching their heads on Monday. The gaming corporation recently spent $163 million for a 36% stake in Barstool Sports, which will increase to about 50% after three years (and $62 million more) with the ability to buy a controlling ownership.

Despite the brand’s long-earned reputation for misogyny and cyber bullying, Schippers told Billy Penn the website will no longer include “comments that might be deemed as harassment or discrimination of women or minorities."

As one reader wrote on Twitter, “If they feel the website was so guilty of harassment they had to issue a statement that it’s not gonna do harassment anymore, why the hell did they even buy it?”

• Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer has been an outspoken critic of the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scheme. But during an interview with Real Sports that will air on HBO at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Bauer claimed as far back as 2018 that the team’s pitchers were also cheating by doctoring baseballs.

“You’re not supposed to be giving up these secrets,” reporter Bernie Goldberg said during the interview. “I mean — your fellow baseball players aren’t gonna be happy about this.”

“Yeah. Well, It needs to be talked about more because it affects every single pitch,” Bauer responded. “And it’s a bigger advantage than steroids ever were. 'Cause if you know how to manipulate it, you can make the ball do drastically different things from pitch to pitch at the same velocity.”

• As my colleague Jonathan Tannenwald reported on Monday, NBC’s Premier League fan fest will be coming to Philly on April 4-5. Despite the huge soccer spotlight it will shine on the city, don’t expect to hear a lot about the Philadelphia Union. As Tannenwald noted, NBC doesn’t broadcast Union games locally or MLS games nationally, so “its interest is limited.”