Fact check: Mislabeled photo of Magic Johnson is from 2012 AIDS documentary
By Reuters Staff
4 Min Read
Posts on social media feature a photo of basketball legend and HIV positive Earvin “Magic” Johnson with a venipuncture in his arm. Some users claim the photo shows Johnson “donating blood to the Red Cross” to “help people in underprivileged communities deal with COVID-19”. This allegation is false. The image has been mislabeled: it is a screengrab from a 2012 documentary about AIDS and shows a doctor taking his blood sample.
June 24, 2019; Los Angeles, CA, USA; NBA former player Magic Johnson poses with his lifetime achievement award at the 2019 NBA Awards show at Barker Hanger. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
An Instagram post with the claim liked at least 6,190 times can be seen here . Other posts are visible here , here .
Most iterations seem to replicate the wording or feature a screenshot of a now deleted tweet (archived version: archive.vn/cbtba ) from Feb. 11, 2020 that said: “Earlier today, NBA legend Magic Johnson donated some of his blood to the Red Cross to help people in underprivileged communities deal with COVID-19. (goat emoji)(via @RedCross)”
In a subsequent tweet, the user @Ultraweedhater said his post was a “joke” ( bit.ly/3deMeqD )
A reverse search of the image shows the screengrab is from Frontline’s documentary “Endgame: Aids in Black America”, released on July 10, 2012 ( here , here ), which explored why the HIV epidemic is so much more prevalent in the African American community.
The screengrab circulating on social media can be seen around timestamp 1:07:14 here . It shows HIV researcher and Johnson's doctor David Ho ( here , here ) taking his blood sample.
The Red Cross and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) say ( here and here ) that individuals who have ever tested positive for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, should not donate blood. The Red Cross also says you should not donate blood “if you have done something that puts you at risk for becoming infected with HIV”.
Johnson, former Los Angeles Lakers point guard, stunned the sports world in 1991 when he announced he had contracted HIV and was retiring at the peak of his NBA career. ( here , here )
It is not the first time this image has been falsely labeled. In 2015 Snopes debunked a similar claim here .
False. A screengrab from a documentary released in 2012, shows a doctor taking Magic Johnson’s blood sample, not Johnson “donating blood”.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
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