Elle Magazine forced to apologize as Kim & Kanye fake news completely backfires
Elle Magazine has apologized for their “bad joke” which saw the publication post a false ‘breaking news’ tweet about the break up of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, in an effort to lure readers to a voter registration site.
The US version of the mag came under fire from their six million Twitter followers after posting the clickbait message on Thursday, which led readers to whenweallvote.org instead of revealing juicy details about the celebrity couple.
Just hours after sharing the misguided post (which has now been deleted), the publication was forced to apologize for misleading their peeved readers who accused Elle of being shameless and condescending.
This is trash nonsense. Who do you think you are reaching with this? Guess what? One can be civic minded and interested in celebrity gossip. Do better.
— roxane gay (@rgay) October 18, 2018
Hot tip: Women are fully capable of being self-actualized people who can be interested in pop culture news AND the current political landscape, @ELLEmagazine. This is trash, and so is my newly-canceled subscription. https://t.co/Y0xMRvPfdu
— AC Slayer 🔪🔪🔪 (@amber_lcarter) October 18, 2018
This is condescending. People can care about more than one thing at once!
— Erin Strecker (@ErinStrecker) October 18, 2018
It’s not clever - its taking advantage of the situation. There are smarter ways to do it without lying in a climate where trust in media is crazy low
— bubba atkinson (@BubbaAtkinson) October 18, 2018
Despite the tone deaf tweet, the magazine was unable to close its ears to the outcry from readers and it issued an apology later on Thursday.
“We made a bad joke. Our passion for voter registration clouded our judgement and we are sincerely sorry,” the magazine tweeted.
We made a bad joke. Our passion for voter registration clouded our judgement and we are sincerely sorry. https://t.co/cYGGrpfBCz
— ELLE Magazine (US) (@ELLEmagazine) October 18, 2018
However the backlash continued as the media outlet was accused of being deceitful and unoriginal for hopping on the clickbait scheme, which had previously been shared by several other Twitter users.
We didn’t think there was a wrong way to encourage people to vote, but ELLE Magazine found ithttps://t.co/OyoDouuWbipic.twitter.com/nLL5wZgoaW
— The Mary Sue (@TheMarySue) October 18, 2018
Aren’t there better ways to encourage people to vote instead of lying about a marriage as clickbait? Cheap and shameless.
— Lisa Boothe (@LisaMarieBoothe) October 19, 2018
Okay. That's not ethical or appropriate. I'm all for get out the vote efforts, but this is misleading and fuels the "fake news" fire...
— 🖐Just Jake🤚 (@JustJake_91) October 18, 2018
This is what fake news looks like. It’s deceitful, ugly and just for the clicks. Big shame.
— michael litman (@mlitman) October 18, 2018
When a random tweeter did this it was clever but now you’re just stealing their tweet and also spreading fake news. https://t.co/RDZg4bQsMc
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 18, 2018
