News stations are supposed to report the facts, not spread internet jokes as fact. But that’s basically what happened at WGN this week during a segment on Kyle Shanahan’s car crash. A doctored photo of the 49ers head coach made it to live TV, and viewers noticed right away. Now, WGN is doing damage control.

“On Wednesday’s ‘WGN Morning News Show’ sports segment, we mistakenly aired a photo of Kyle Shanahan, coach of the San Francisco 49ers,” the channel told TMZ. “The photo was an internet meme and not authentic, and we apologize for making the error. It was not intentional.”

The photoshopped image had Shanahan’s face on a picture of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell with his wife, Elaine Chao, part of a funny online trend. This particular post with Shanahan is attributed to a user named East Bay Chris.

Somehow, WGN’s staff couldn’t catch the gaffe and let this doctored image go live.

“Listen to the co-anchor when she realizes. Also, what is that weird laugh effect?” Leigh Kimmins McManus from The Daily Beast shared on X.

East Bay Chris himself reacted to the image making it online: “Holy s–t.”

Shanahan received treatment at the Stanford Hospital, while McConnell’s location remains mysterious. CNN claims the Senator is at MedStar George Washington University, but online discussions suggest he is not there. McConnell fell in his home in June, and there have been little to no updates about what actually happened.

The bigger story here, though, is what actually happened to Shanahan. On July 14, while in Palo Alto, Shanahan was involved in an accident in which he hit another car when he went to pick up a phone that fell beside his seat. Shanahan suffered a concussion, broken ribs, a broken nose, a broken hand, and a large cut above his eye.

WGN also missed that the Shanahan pictured in the image did not have a single scratch on his face.

The 49ers head coach stayed out of the public eye for days, which only fueled speculation, and things got messier when authorities claimed that the crash was the other driver’s fault. Shanahan cleared the air this week while speaking to Bay Area reporters. 

“I hit her,” Shanahan said Tuesday. “I don’t know why it was reported that way [on the collision report database]. The police report doesn’t say that.”

He admitted total responsibility for the crash, explaining that in those two seconds he looked for his phone, the crash occurred.

“I was going 20 miles an hour,” Shanahan said. “I was not on my phone, but I dropped my phone, and it was stuck in my seat. It was on my lap, and it slid off. And I went down to look for it and took my eyes off the road for two seconds. And as I was coming up, the airbags hit me in my face, and they broke my nose. And then they said the visor really gashed me. … I took my eyes off the road looking for my phone, and my car veered into someone.”

Palo Alto police later confirmed his version of events was accurate.

So while the internet was busy laughing at a meme, the real story was a coach owning up to a mistake that could have been far worse.