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Fox News Drops the Ball After Twitter Hack

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Minda Zetlin
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Unless you’ve been completely bewitched by the Casey Anthony trial, you know by now that some hackers celebrated Independence Day by hacking the Twitter account @FoxNewsPolitics and putting up six posts describing how President Obama was shot to death in Iowa restaurant while he was actually enjoying a barbecue. A hacker group called Script Kiddies supposedly claimed responsibility, according to a single student journalist who’s the only one to have received the claim.

I’m not blaming Fox News for having gotten hacked–that can literally happen to any organization. It’s even happened to the CIA.

It’s what happened after the hack that looks bad: Nothing, at least not right away. Nine hours after the fake messages were posted, well after CNN and other major news organizations had started spreading word of the hoax, the “#ObamaDead” posts were still there for all the world to see.

Why? Good question. Fox isn’t saying.

Read more at The New York Times (among many others).

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  • Guest

    shouldn’t Twitter be the one to answer the question as to why the posts remained … with the account hacked, the question is whether or not Fox had access to that account in the aftermath. while one is free to question Fox’s reporting, the idea that they would voluntarily leave such reckless and irresponsible tweets up is a bit much…i wonder why Twitter didn’t take the initiative and remove the tweets/suspend the account.

  • http://technology.inc.com/2011/07/07/how-not-to-handle-a-crisis-5-lessons-from-the-fox-news-twitter-hack/ How Not to Handle a Crisis: 5 Lessons From the Fox News Twitter Hack | Inc. Technology

    [...] question became entirely un-theoretical for Fox News on Monday, when some hackers took control of the Twitter account @FoxNewsPolitics and began tweeting that President Obama had been shot to death, while he was in [...]