Last Friday, a tweet from the What's Trending Twitter page claimed that Apple founder Steve Jobs had passed away. An apology was later made but by that time the false word on Jobs had spread all over the Internet. On Tuesday, the host of the What's Trending web video show, Shira Lazar, finally offered an explanation on why such a message was sent out in the first place.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lazar made the explanation at the top of the latest episode of the What's Trending show. She said, "Last Friday, a miscommunication in the newsroom resulted in a junior staffer at What's Trending sending a tweet that contains an unchecked, unconfirmed and ultimately untrue report about Steve Jobs." While the message was quickly deleted, Lazar said, "Unfortunately by then, the original tweet had already made its way around the Internet, and who did it and how it happened no longer mattered."
Lazar apologized to Steve Jobs and his family for the false report, saying, "We are immeasurably sorry for what happened, and we apologize unreservedly to him, his family his friends, his fans and anyone else who was or is affected by our actions last week." Lazar also offered an apology to CBS News. The web site for the TV news network hosted the independently produced What's Trending site but later cut its ties with What's Trending following Friday's incident. Some news organizations said in error on Friday that CBS News was directly responsible for the false Twitter report. Lazar said that the show would try to prevent such errors from happening in the future.
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