All is not well with Caroline Wozniacki, who has taken to X (formerly known as Twitter) to rip apart journalist, Jon Wertheim for misquoting her. This is with regard to Simona Halep’s doping controversy, where she was held accountable for giving opinions on Martina Hingis in connection with it.
Wozniacki has said that those quotes were not from her and made it absolutely clear that they were from an Instagram account, which was pretending to be her. She went on to add that it was very frustrating and could have been avoided by contacting her. She reiterated by saying that, though she understands mistakes can happen, those comments were clearly not from her.
It’s come to my attention that @jon_wertheim posted, and since deleted, quotes and opinions from me about Martina Hingis and the Halep doping case.
To be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR those quotes were NOT from me, but instead were taken from an account on Instagram that pretended to be…— Caroline Wozniacki (@CaroWozniacki) September 21, 2023
To delve deeper, the doping controversy surrounding Simona Halep has created a stir in the tennis world. The player has been served a ban for four years, which could effectively run until October 2026. This is due to the fact that her samples were found to be contaminated with “Roxadustat”, a performance-enhancing substance.
There have been mixed reactions to the ban from tennis players in particular, who were found to be engaged in verbal volleys. One such opinion that has created this controversy was that utilized by Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim. This was supposedly attributed to a quote from Caroline Wozniacki, which actually lacked authenticity, for which she responded in a stern manner, as stated above.
Caroline Wozniacki is not getting pacified anytime soon
Jon Wertheim, in reply, has stated that the quotes he has stated have come from a hacked or a fake account. In accordance with this, he has stated that the story has been corrected.
With full apologies to Caroline: …Editors’ note, Sept. 21, 11:20 a.m: Quotes attributed to Caroline Wozniacki which initially appeared in an earlier version of this story were found not to be authentic. SI has since learned she was not the source and regrets this error.
— Jon Wertheim (@jon_wertheim) September 21, 2023
Jon also went ahead to state that he has personally apologized to Wozniacki. He also said, “I was duped. She was impersonated…Otherwise, she had nothing to do with this and any quotes attributed to her should not be.”
But Caroline was in no mood to relent, as she replied to him saying that this wasn’t a hacked account. She criticized him further, stating “You simply did not do your research to see it was a fake account with no verified check mark on it! Very simple to see on Instagram!”.
She found support in the form of former American Tennis star Mardy Fish, who tweeted “Gotta be first to get the clicks”. This is to imply that these days, journalists are more worried about getting more clicks for their articles than checking for facts before posting them.
Tennis fans have also joined in and are criticizing Jon for his haplessness, suggesting apologies, and bemoaning the ways of journalism in today’s world. Hopefully, journalists around the world will take notice of these mishaps and exercise more caution while dealing with sensitive issues.