Johannesburg -
A profanity-laden tweet issued on News24's Twitter account on Wednesday, regarding the plane crash in Taiwan, was posted by a staff member, editor-in-chief Andrew Trench said.
“The tweet was sent out by accident by a News24 staffer,” Trench said.
“As soon as we realised what had happened we removed it and tweeted an apology.”
He said News24 launched an internal disciplinary process.
“The lesson here is a journalist should not say anything on any social media account that they would not say to their mom.”
Earlier on Wednesday, a tweet went out on the News24's account with pictures of the plane as it swooped over a bridge before crashing in Taipei, Taiwan.
The caption read: “JESUS CHRIST HOLY F**K RT @News24: WATCH: Dramatic footage of plane crash in Taiwan.”
The tweet was deleted, but not before Twitter users had taken a screen grab of it.
After deleting the tweet @News24 tweeted: “We sincerely apologise for the previous tweet and any offence its content may have caused. It was sent out erroneously.”
Since then a parody account called @Newsf****ng24 has popped up on the social networking site and already garnered 1445 followers by 1.30pm.
The parody account makes fun of News24 by inserting swear words into every tweet.
The first tweet sent out four hours ago read: “Let's f****ng deliver some f****ng news!”
This was followed by tweets such as “The f****ng weather is so f****ng temperate” and “Load shedding is f****ng on like donkey f****ng kong. Charge your f****ng shit.”
Sapa