Photo: PR Executive Kicked Out of Office for Racist Tweet

InterActiveCorp media company decided to fire its infamous PR executive Justine Sacco, who made a racist tweet on December 20, 2013, Friday. “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” the lady wrote.

“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.
There is no excuse for the hateful statements that have been made and we condemn them unequivocally.

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,” the statement by IAC said.

It would be recalled that Justine Sacco had tweeted a racist, stereotype remark, which has been later deleted, from an airport in London before she left for Cape Town, South Africa, on December 20, 2013, Friday.

Her tweet went viral and caused outrage on social media.

Mrs. Sacco used to be 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. The main activities of the embattled PR executive revolved around communicating with reporters, which made her Twitter comment about Africa even more shocking.

Her Twitter account was relatively obscure when she posted the infamous message: less than 500 people were following it.

Sacco apparently had no Internet access during her flight, so she could not know what effect her message made.

Websites such as Valleywag and Buzzfeed highlighted Sacco’s account, and soon it had thousands of followers and thousands of harsh replies directed at it. Some were downright hateful.

On Friday evening a Twitter hashtag, #HasJustineLandedYet, became a running commentary about Sacco.

Justine Sacco is yet to comment about her action. 

Oodera