LOS ANGELES — Ashton Kutcher has enlisted a team of communications specialists to help him manage his Twitter feed after he ignorantly tweeted a message in support of fired Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.
“Clearly the platform has become too big to be managed by a single individual,” Kutcher, 33, wrote in a statement Thursday.
PENN STATE TRUSTEES FIRE PATERNO, UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT
RIOT POLICE DEPLOYED AS STUDENTS PROTEST PATERNO’S FIRING
THE LEGEND OF JOEPA STARTED IN BROOKLYN AND ENDS IN SHAME
“I feel responsible for delivering an informed opinion and not spreading gossip or rumors through my Twitter feed …. while I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk I’m going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst Media to ensure the quality of its content,” he added.
The “Two and a Half Men” star said he had returned home from work late Wednesday when he heard Paterno was fired and “having no more information than that, I assumed that he had been fired due to poor performance as an aging coach,” he explained.
It was in that frame of mind that Kutcher tweeted, “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste,” unleashing the wrath of his more than 8 million Twitter followers who slammed the actor for his insensitivity, in the wake of the child sex abuse scandal at the school.
VACCARO: PATERNO WASTED EVERY CHANCE TO STOP THIS
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Kutcher quickly backtracked after an online frenzy broke out and he wrote a series of Twitter messages, that he since deleted, to apologize.
Realizing the gravity of his gaffe, Kutcher left a frank apology on his Twitter page and signed off from the microblogging website — at least temporarily.
“As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case,” he tweeted early Thursday.
“As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won’t happen again,” he added.
Paterno, 84, was fired by the board of trustees Wednesday night for his handling of the allegations against his longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was indicted over the weekend on charges of child sex abuse over a 15-year period.
In 2002, Paterno failed to alert the authorities to the claims of then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary, who said he saw Sandusky in the Penn State showers having sex with a young boy.