By Meghan Keneally PUBLISHED: 14:47 EST, 24 December 2013 | UPDATED: 18:49 EST, 24 December 2013 A friend of the disgraced PR executive who became globally notorious following a tasteless tweet about AIDs has offered a defense of her - of sorts. Jeff Bercovici said that Justine Sacco clearly made a mistake when she posted a Tweet saying that she hoped she didn't get AIDs during a trip to South Africa, but she was 'still figuring out' Twitter. Bercovici called the move 'a failure of judgment and a poor attempt at expression' in a column for Forbes.com.
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Justine Sacco was fired after posting a racist Tweet about AIDs before getting on a 12-hour flight to South Africa where her relatives live
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She has issued an apology and faced massive online backlash
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Her friend has now spoken out saying that she felt she had to be 'risque'
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Sacco was the head PR representative of IAC, owned by Barry Diller and responsible for websites like Vimeo, OkCupid, and Tinder to name a few
The PR representative would have just been discovering the furor her racist @placeholder had created while she was in the air