Whatever time of year it is, you can be sure that companies, journalists and just about anyone on social media will be using it to make fools of themselves. Whether it’s the hot weather going to their heads or it’s just coincidence, this week seems to have seen some particularly cringeworthy Twitter episodes from well-known names that you would think would know better.
Tuesday night saw Formula One giant Ferrari appear to be confused about what city it was in. With the Canadian Grand Prix coming up this weekend, the team tweeted a video about being “ready for Montreal”, but sadly, the video showed the skyline of Toronto, some 330 miles away.
However, I would say even this monumental motoring mix-up has been outdone by prolific merchants of reactionary nonsense The Daily Mail, and specifically its internet-based arm MailOnline.
When Twitter user @MarleyBennett tweeted a weekend joke about the regrets some models might have about the work they accept, he didn’t expect so many parties to display such a sense of humour bypass.
https://twitter.com/marleybennett/status/1003024085394382848
It seems that some confusion was caused by relatively similar appearances of the model and the Twitter user, with many thinking it was a real case of a model experiencing regret at his appearance in a campaign to show the link between smoking and impotency.
Of course, any such confusion could be cleared up by a message to the Twitter user clarifying whether the sentiments were genuine. Then again, you could just do things the MailOnline way and take it at face value, then run a story on it.
It was only a matter of time… https://t.co/UQZOZzvtZH
— Kerry McCarthy (@KerryMP) June 5, 2018
As of Wednesday morning, this misunderstood story had still not been removed from the Daily Mail site.
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Marley says that he had been contacted by journalists asking him about the tweet, and that he explained the misunderstanding to those who got in touch. However, he says the MailOnline did not contact him and simply put a piece together based on their misinterpretation of his tweet.
The Daily Mail is no stranger to getting its facts muddled up, and in fact this is one of their more harmless inaccuracies. As this list shows, the paper has previously put its foot in it on serious matters like immigration, autism and racial stereotypes.
In February 2017, reference website Wikipedia declared the Mail to be a “generally unreliable” source. With such embarrassing gaffes to its name, this can hardly be seen as a surprise.
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