MANILA, Philippines – The Huffington Post has taken down its story on Jeane Napoles and her tax evasion charge that had spread on social media due to a photo it posted alongside its article of a woman bathing in money.
Three days after an INQUIRER.net report was released on October 12, the American online news aggregator posted an erratum to clarify that its initial report was “incorrect” and that the image was a “stock photo” on the Internet.
On October 15, Huffpost replaced the entire article with a two-paragraph statement with a headline “Image Of Woman Bathing In Cash Is A Stock Photo, Does Not Depict Jeane Napoles [CORRECTION].”
Huffpost said:
“Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Jeane Napoles, a 23-year-old Filipino woman, had posted a photo to her social media accounts, depicting herself in a bathtub full of money.
That photo, which was shared from a Facebook account listed under the name Jeane Lim Napoles, does not depict Napoles but is in fact a commercially available stock photo.
Jeane Catherine Lim-Napoles is the daughter of detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged mastermind of the multibillion-peso pork barrel scam involving lawmakers and government officials.