
Don Lemon and CNN endured a hashtag apocalypse on Tuesday.
The anchor and network tasted the fury of a pound sign gone wrong on Tuesday in the form of #AskACop, during a CNN town hall segment, titled, “Cops Under Fire” hosted by Don Lemon.
#AskACop became one of the highest trends on Twitter in the U.S, but not in a good way.
Instead, the potential “kumbaya” conversation between cops and show viewers turned negative before the show’s 7 p.m. broadcast with viewers using Twitter to heave criticism at police.
Here are a few examples of the brutal backlash:
#AskACop why the police refused to answer their phones for 7 minutes after they shot Akai Gurley & texted their union reps while he died
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) December 17, 2014
.@CNN #AskACop Why is it so much easier to bring in a white mass murderer with a military weapon stache alive than an unarmed black suspect?
— Solo (@SoloExMachina) December 16, 2014
With police and community tensions at an all time high, to think this hashtag would bring forth anything other than fury and sarcasm toward the panel, is far fetched. The social media team may want to #askRKelly or askPaulaDeen about how far afield Twitter can go before they pull another online stunt like this…