Putting trust in Twitter (or not): @Wendi_Deng doesn’t belong to Wendi Deng Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch, made headlines over the weekend when it was widely reported that the pair had joined Twitter. But, that apparently wasn’t so.

Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch, made headlines over the weekend when it was widely reported that the pair had joined Twitter. But, that apparently wasn’t so.

Though Twitter had verified both accounts and news agencies had reported on the banter that Mrs. Murdoch was perceived to be engaging in, tweets from the account of @Wendi_Deng this morning state that it is a fake account, and that the person behind it is not Murdoch’s wife.

When the Wendi_Deng account came clean, it stated that it was surprised as everyone to know that the account had been verified for more than a day.

There have been no tweets from the Rupert Murdoch account to suggest that the @Wendi_Deng account did not belong to his wife.

This raises a few questions. First: What is the process behind verifying a Twitter account? And second, one that J-Source has asked before: Why did so many news agencies simply run stories with tweets from the two accounts as stand-alone sources? 

UPDATE: We can answer one of these questions now (sort of). J-Source asked Twitter what its verification process was and what exactly happened in this instance. Here is its response:

"We don't comment on our verification process but can confirm that the @wendi_deng account was mistakenly verified for a short period of time. We apologize for the confusion this caused."