Weather Channel Caught In Storm Of Controversy Over Sarcastic Tweet

The Weather Channel has apologized to outgoing Fort Worth, Texas, City Councilman Joel Burns after a recent Twitter flap.

Burns, an openly gay politician, gained national attention in October of 2010 when he made an impassioned “It Gets Better” speech at a council meeting, decrying the bullying of young LGBT students.

The incident between Burns and The Weather Channel began when Burns tweeted his frustration over pictures of Dallas being displayed by the app when people check the weather for Fort Worth.

That’s when the folks behind The Weather Channel’s Twitter feed finally spoke up.

“Wow, way to be a d--k in responding to a simple request," one user tweeted at The Weather Channel after the exchange. "You suck, social media intern."

“Fire your social media person. That was an awful response to Joel,” another wrote.

Within a couple hours of the altercation, The Weather Channel had tweeted an apology.

It also issued a statement to The Wrap:

This morning one of our team members used sarcasm in an unfortunate and unacceptable way on our Twitter account. ... It was not our intention to offend and we are sorry that we did. We have since apologized to Councilman Burns and want to restate that sincere apology and assure him that this tweet does not represent our views. In fact, this is the opposite of how we want to interact with our fans, as we value their input on any occasion. We are taking the necessary steps to be sure something like this does not occur again.

Burns used the attention from the Twitter feud to try and raise a little money and awareness for a cause that he supports. In the video below, he calls on The Weather Channel to donate $100,000 to an anti-bullying project of its choice.