Exec of liberal company fired after Tweet?

christiefan915 said:
Another moron who just learned the hard way about the need for good manners and common courtesy. And the delicious irony is that she works in Public Relations. :D

(CNN) -- The "tweet heard round the world" was followed by the sound of a slamming door Saturday.

Media company IAC has "parted ways" with company PR executive Justine Sacco over her tweet: "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!"

"The offensive comment does not reflect the views and values of IAC. We take this issue very seriously, and we have parted ways with the employee in question," an IAC spokesman said in a statement.

"There is no excuse for the hateful statements that have been made and we condemn them unequivocally," he said. "We hope, however, that time and action, and the forgiving human spirit, will not result in the wholesale condemnation of an individual who we have otherwise known to be a decent person at core..."

Sacco was the head of corporate communications for IAC, the media company chaired by Barry Diller that operates websites such as The Daily Beast, About.com, CollegeHumor and Match.com. Her whole job revolved around communicating with reporters -- which made her Twitter comment about Africa all the more shocking....

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/21/us/sacco-offensive-tweet/
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what a ditz.

its funny how some people still think they are just talking to friends when they do twitter
 
If you work in PR and you tweet this, then yeah you deserve to be fired. That's like saying she was a mechanic but took a sledgehammer to a customer's engine.
 
christiefan915 said:
If the company fired her it's because they don't want to lose business from people who might think her gaffes represent corporate thinking. Her comment went viral and forced the company to clean up the mess she made. Anybody working in PR should know how to weigh their words carefully.

Everyone needs to stop saying it's a free speech issue and understand that it's about the bottom line, period.
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Yes that is accepted but they wouldn't have done anything unless there were people out there that just wait for opportunities like that to present themselves. She is an idiot that's clear but an apology ought to have been enough. We know how it all works, some single issue pressure group gets hold of it and uses it to gain some cheap publicity by creating yet another media feeding frenzy.
 
christiefan915 said:
I agree with you that faux outrage is rampant on both sides. What I don't get is people like Sacco who make the kind of mistake she did, forcing her company into a public controversy they could have lived without. Maybe she was drunk or jet-lagged but her brain sure wasn't firing on all eight cylinders.
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Or her racism is so ingrained, she thought it was funny
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
Yes that is accepted but they wouldn't have done anything unless there were people out there that just wait for opportunities like that to present themselves. She is an idiot that's clear but an apology ought to have been enough. We know how it all works, some single issue pressure group gets hold of it and uses it to gain some cheap publicity by creating yet another media feeding frenzy.
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again... the only reason she was fired was because the company executives saw a negative potential impact on their bottom line. That's business.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
Yes that is accepted but they wouldn't have done anything unless there were people out there that just wait for opportunities like that to present themselves. She is an idiot that's clear but an apology ought to have been enough. We know how it all works, some single issue pressure group gets hold of it and uses it to gain some cheap publicity by creating yet another media feeding frenzy.
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What's the world coming to when a PR person can't broadcast racist shit without incident?
 
aeprga said:
What's the world coming to when a PR person can't broadcast racist shit without incident?
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Is it racism? After all, the disease originated on the African continent and reached epidemic proportions there; it is correct to assume that it was an issue with black Africans. How is that racist when facts support the assertion?
 
She Tweeted that she wouldn't get AIDS because she's white, didn't she?

Now if she'd Tweeted that her chances of getting AIDS were slim because she's not a gay man...
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
Why don't you read this first and then comment? Just imagine if there was a Poet type character that saw the tweet and then decided to use it to gain some notoriety.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffber...cco-and-the-self-inflicted-perils-of-twitter/
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I consider the job she held as well. The reality is somebody in PR would need to be able to understand the different aspects that the remark may take in the minds of others and how it could reflect on her company and thus her job.

If you work in PR and make this tweet you deserve to be fired because you suck at your job. If you don't get the "nuances" of Twitter and you are in PR then you truly are incapable of doing that job.
 
Truth Detector said:
Is it racism? After all, the disease originated on the African continent and reached epidemic proportions there; it is correct to assume that it was an issue with black Africans. How is that racist when facts support the assertion?
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so... she was correct in her thinking that white people are somehow immune from AIDS while traveling in Africa?

And again.... it's business. Business owners have the right to fire someone whose behavior they feel is a negative influence on their bottom line, especially when their position is one of dealing with the public.
 
maineman said:
so... she was correct in her thinking that white people are somehow immune from AIDS while traveling in Africa?

And again.... it's business. Business owners have the right to fire someone whose behavior they feel is a negative influence on their bottom line, especially when their position is one of dealing with the public.
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Now, as for the tweet itself. Read above to see if I think she should be fired.

The tweet reads more to me like self-deprecating sarcastic humor. It seemed to me not that she believed she couldn't get it, but more that she was making fun of people who think they couldn't. Of course I can't read a heart in 140 characters, and thus a person in PR should have been smarter than to tweet that even if she was being sarcastic about dumb whites who think they are safe from AIDS.
 
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