A CNBC anchor apologized on Monday after she was trolled into falsely reporting a wave of Twitter layoffs late last week.
TechCheck anchor Deirdre Bosa was one of multiple journalists who initially reported that Elon Musk laid off an entire group of data engineers on his first full day as the self-described “Chief Twit.” The reporters cited two men standing outside of Twitter’s headquarters with boxes full of items—one of whom gave his name as “Rahul Ligma,” a reference to a crude joke. Neither of the men were actually ever Twitter employees.
“I want to address something that CNBC reported Friday,” Bosa said Monday on her show. “I tweeted that a team of data engineers were laid off at Twitter after speaking to two people who claimed that they were. They were not real employees, and I didn’t do enough to confirm who they were.”
Bosa was not the only reporter fooled by the hoax. Multiple outlets, including Bloomberg, reported that mass layoffs had begun at the social-media company, though the only individuals who’d actually lost their jobs were members of Twitter’s executive suite. Those exits very publicly included CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, among others.
The Musk-led company does plan to increase its layoffs, according to The Wall Street Journal, a move that will certainly impact the engineering team. The new billionaire boss plans to cut more than 25 percent of jobs from the company, the Journal reported, including in the legal, engineering, sales, and product teams.
In her statement on Monday, though, Bosa admitted she jumped the gun. She left a screenshot of her Friday visible on her Twitter page for transparency.
“They got me, and that is on me,” she said. “We—I—regret the mistake.”
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