News station confuses man's Twitter feed for rapist's

Journalist's Twitter handle gets mistaken for a rapist's. / Twitter/abrahamjoseph

Twitter handles can be confusing.

Sometimes people select them in a hurry, or from a menu after the one they really wanted is not available.

So it's worth checking whether a Twitter feed really does belong to the person you'd like to follow. This is a lesson that the Houston-based KHOU news station recently learned.

In writing about  policeman Abraham Joseph, who was convicted of raping a waitress, the station apparently didn't verify that the Twitter handle @abrahamjoseph didn't belong to Joseph.

It inserted a widget into its Web page, so that the feed would run alongside the news story.

According to BetaBeat, New York journalist and producer Abraham Riesman, who owns the Twitter handle @abrahamjoseph, wasn't very pleased. Riesman attempted to point out to KHOU that it was a case of mistaken identity.

Riesman tweeted to KHOU: "Hey, @KHOU -- I'm not a convicted rapist! Please take my Twitter feed down from this article."

In response to the mix-up, Riesman told BetaBeat:

Basic logic dictates that there is no way this is (the rapist Abraham Joseph's) Twitter feed. For one: look at my avatar. It's a really white, red-headed gentleman with glasses and the fact that this is a TV station would convey they have some visual sense of what this convicted rapist would look like.

It's not clear if KHOU has returned any of Riesman's entreaties. However, the widget has been removed from the article.

KHOU did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment.

This article originally appeared on CNET.