He asked for someone to embark on “a mission”: “We just need someone to make him feel bad.” The message was written by Casey Bloys, president and CEO of HBO, and the recipient was Kathleen McCaffrey, vice president of programming. The objective of that “mission” was to create “a secret army” to attack a television critic who had not liked the remake of Perry Mason. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last.
Bloys had to come forward this Thursday after the report published by Rolling Stone magazine that revealed that the president of HBO created fake accounts on Twitter, now X, to “troll” television critics who did not praise his content. During the presentation of the platform’s new programming, and according to The Guardian, Bloys acknowledged that, while working from home in 2020 and 2021, he spent a lot of time on Twitter: “And I came up with a very stupid idea to vent my frustration.” .
HBO’s top executive has apologized for his behavior after acknowledging that he wrote six insulting tweets from fake accounts, and has assured that he has learned his lesson: “I have made progress in the use of direct messages,” he said, “so now “When I disagree with something I talk about it in a much healthier way.”
The network of fake accounts has come to light following the lawsuit of a former HBO employee who was allegedly responsible for some of the insulting tweets, and who has taken the multinational to court after firing him, he says, because of a problem mental health.
Rolling Stone has reviewed the metadata of the abusive messages to verify their authenticity. The phone number used to create the accounts is registered to McCaffrey, the manager who was ordered to create this “army.” In four of the six cases, the magazine adds, the language of the false tweets coincides “exactly” with McCaffrey’s way of expressing himself.
