In other news. . . : Sorry, that wasn’t Wendi Deng Murdoch on Twitter
By The Reliable Source
Wendi Deng: Not on Twitter.
(Marc Stamas/Getty Images)
• Twitter fans craving an unmediated glimpse into the mind of Wendi Deng Murdoch were hoaxed this past weekend by what turned out to be a parody account — despite the fact that Twitter officials validated it as real. The tweets from “Wendi_Deng” quickly drew more than 9,000 followers and were so banal (“dear twitter friends – its wendi with an i. thx”) that few raised doubts — after all, the real-life Deng’s husband, scandal-scarred publishing mogul Rupert Murdoch, had surprised the world by joining Twitter, f’real, a few days earlier. But on Tuesday, after a few jouranlists quoted the tweets and attributed them to Deng, News International reps denounced the account as a fake, reports AP. Twitter apologized but did not explain how it had mistakenly verified the account, a step it routinely takes for VIPs on the site. The still-anonymous tweeter apologized, sort of, to anyone who felt misled, “but I never said it was entirely genuine.”
Read earlier:
Wendi Deng Murdoch: Billionaire’s wife, pie avenger, movie producer, 11/3/11
Ashton Kutcher hands Twitter to media team after Paterno gaffe; era of celebrity overshare coming to an end?, 11/10/11
Read also:
Erik Wemple: Wendi Deng on Twitter: Should we have known?, 1/3/11
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04:57 PM ET, 01/03/2012
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