Tampa Bay Times Apologizes for Profane, Bizarre News Alert Sent Out by Vendor
The Tampa Bay Times is issuing an apology after sending out a profane and kind of strange news alert.
The alert, flagged by multiple people on Twitter, said, “look a fucking title,” along with a cartoon of a turtle carrying fake news on its back with the caption “Turtle Fake News.”
uhhhh pic.twitter.com/eidPqKXpih
— Emily Wunderlich (@EmilyWunderlich) May 18, 2020
great fucking story, @TB_Times pic.twitter.com/pTsuws20X0
— George Quraishi (@quraishi) May 18, 2020
The Times looked into the matter and issued an apology.
Executive editor Mark Katches explained that “the alert was sent by an employee of a Times technology vendor who was testing a news alert system” and they were not aware of it before it went out.
“The company, Naviga, provides the platform that many news organizations use to send push notifications to their digital app users. We apologize deeply to our readers.”
Mistakes happen every day, though this particular one — to paraphrase a line from Dexter — begs the question: what is “turtle fake news” and how does it differ from regular fake news? Is it merely the delivery from the turtle itself or does the fake news itself need to be sufficiently turtle-y?
