It may be an instance of the children game called; 

> - ***Chinese whispers (or telephone in the United States)***  is an internationally popular game, in which one person whispers a message to another and so on through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. 

> - ***Although the objective is to pass around the message without it becoming misheard and altered along the way, part of the fun is that, regardless, this usually ends up happening.***


Wikipedia