Washington, April 24 (IANS) President Barack Obama was said to be fine after a tweet by the Associated Press, America’s largest news agency, about blasts athe White House and injuries to the president was shot down as false within seconds.
The president was fine Press Secretary Jay Carney assured the media at the daily White House briefing. “I was just with him,” Carney added.
Carney made the comment as the AP tweet came reading, “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”
The AP’s White House Correspondent Julie Pace also noted the tweet was the result of a hacked account.
“It appears as though AP’s Twitter account has been hacked, so anything that was just sent out about any incident at the White House is obviously false,” she said.
The official AP Twitter account, @AP, was listed as “suspended” on the social media site soon after the erroneous Tweet was sent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped sharply on the news however, though quickly regained its losses when the report was deemed false.
The group Syrian Electronic Army, behind previous hacks of the BBC and CBS News, claimed responsibility for the false message on its website.
Twitter users generally seemed to recognize the message as false almost immediately. Multiple news organizations and reporters have reported hacking attacks on Twitter in the past, including CBS News earlier this week.
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