On the heels of Theodore Wafer’s guilty verdict on Thursday for the murder of Renisha McBride in Dearborn, Mich., the Associated Press got its ass handed to it courtesy of Twitter.
AP prides itself on being a respectable news agency, but last night it proved that it had no respect for the 19-year-old, whom Wafer shot after she approached his porch in the middle of the night last November after she crashed her car. Although he said he was “scared” and protecting his property, Wafer was successfully convicted of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
Although most news outlets reported that Wafer was convicted, AP took it upon itself to drag McBride’s name through the dirt with the following tweet:
That didn’t sit well with many on Twitter, for obvious reasons:
Eventually AP’s Twitter account was corrected to reflect a new headline:
But it was too late; #APheadlines had already manifested itself on Twitter:
Although AP may have corrected its faux pas, it should never have happened in the first place.
Yesha Callahan is editor of The Grapevine and a staff writer at The Root. Follow her on Twitter.