News Corp magazine uses photo of a young woman in lingerie in job ad for interns

News Corp Australia’s most popular magazine insert has advertised for fashion interns by using a photo of a young woman dressed in underwear on all fours on a bed.

The ad, since removed, was posted on Instagram and asked people who were interested in being a fashion intern to email their CV “or tag friends who might be good candidates”.

Murdoch’s glossy magazine insert, Sunday Style – which appears in weekend papers the Sunday Herald Sun and the Sunday Telegraph – conceded “an error in judgment” in posting the ad for interns.

“We made an error in judgment today with an image used in a recent Instagram post calling for interns that has since been taken down. We take our intern program seriously and apologise for any offence caused,” read a post on the Sunday Style Instagram feed.

The original post – featuring the ad – was deleted.

A spokeswoman for NewsLifeMedia, the company’s magazine arm, declined to comment and referred Guardian Australia to the apology on Instagram.

Sunday Style has a circulation of almost 900,000 and is the most popular glossy insert in the newspaper market. The magazine features style, beauty and celebrity stories.

The intern ad was lampooned on Twitter after being brought to light by an Age journalist, Suzanne Carbone, when she posted it on Twitter, although many Twitter users believed the original was a parody.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2015