President Donald Trump wasn’t shot by a gunman during his swearing-in ceremony Friday, contrary to “breaking news” reported by a BBC Twitter account.
“Breaking News: President Trump is injured in arm by gunfire #Inauguration,” BBC Northampton tweeted to its nearly 40,000 Twitter followers Friday.
The erroneous claim was deleted within minutes, but not before being widely shared on social media by skeptical Twitter users wary of the report.
“Seems odd that little old BBC Northampton would be first with this news,” opined a Twitter user in response to the claims, BBC reported.
“Guessing you’ve been hacked?” wrote another. “Not seen this ANYWHERE else!”
Indeed, the broadcaster stated afterwards that the claim was the handiwork of a hacker who had apparently breached the BBC Northampton Twitter account.
“Apologies to anyone who saw an unusual tweet from our account this morning. We do appear to have been hacked and we are looking into how,” BBC Northampton said in a tweet after reclaiming the account.
“We are investigating and taking steps to ensure this does not happen again,” a spokesperson said, as reported by the BBC.
Though the bogus tweet failed to gain too much traction prior to being refuted, similar Twitter hacks carried out in the past have resulted in significant consequences: in 2013, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 100 points in a matter of seconds after hackers compromised the Associated Press’s Twitter account and tweeted that explosions were reported at the White House.
Bloomberg News later determined the fake tweet wiped roughly $136 billion from the S&P 500 index in about two minutes’ time.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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