Updated 1:02 p.m.
Delaware Gov. Jack Markell’s (D) office said Thursday that an “inappropriate” photo of a woman in bondage gear was accidentally sent out from the governor’s Twitter account due to an unfortunate link mix-up.
The original tweet, which promoted the governor’s announcement of a new education initiative, was accompanied by an image of a blonde woman wearing what appeared to be bondage gear and making a peace sign. The tweet was quickly deleted, but not before WHYY reporter Shirley Min caught a screen grab:
Ummm… Maybe she’s a teacher? @GovernorMarkell pic.twitter.com/3kXlpPgf7j
— Shirley Min (@WHYYShirley_Min) September 4, 2014
Markell later tweeted an apology to anyone who was offended by the photo, which was “inadvertantly [sic]” sent out.
An inappropriate photo was inadvertantly sent out earlier. We are looking into how this occurred but apologize to anyone who was offended.
— Gov. Jack Markell (@GovernorMarkell) September 4, 2014
Markell’s press secretary, Kelly Bachman, said in a statement provided to TPM that the tweet was supposed to include a freshly uploaded photo of the governor’s education announcement.
“While the tweet was being edited, the auto-generated link for the picture was inadvertently altered,” the statement read. “As a result, the picture linked to the tweet was a random, unrelated, and inappropriate picture that has been on the internet since 2010, and not the just-uploaded picture of the event. The tweet was deleted and we apologize for the error.”
“The lessons here are not to compose tweets too quickly and there is a lot of odd stuff on the internet,” the statement continued. “We just wish the accidental link had been a cat video.”
