The Associated Press’ main Twitter account sent out a shocking message this afternoon that was promptly retweeted by many of the news agency’s more than two million followers:

To very few people’s surprise, this was, in fact, a very crude hack. All is calm at the White House, where President Obama is going about his daily schedule, including meetings with advisers and with the emir of Qatar. Additionally, multiple AP employees tweeted from their own accounts that their agency’s main account was hacked. A tweet from the AP’s corporate communication team confirmed as much, too:


The hack, however, was incredibly glaring. Not only was the AP alone in tweeting about supposed explosions at the White House and Obama being injured—surely such an event would set off record numbers of tweets—the phony tweet did not comport to the AP Stylebook. The word “explosions” should not have been capitalized, and standard AP Style refers to the president with his title. Even at 140 characters, the Associated Press still adheres to its bible.

The fake tweet was seen on Wall Street, and prompted a momentary sell-off. Moments after the false message appeared on traders’ screens the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by nearly 150 points to an intraday low of 14566.94. It gained that value back almost instantly when the tweet was recognized as a fake.

Twitter quickly suspended the AP’s account, unlike Saturday night, when the account belonging to the CBS News program 60 Minutes fell under the control of hackers referring to themselves as the “Syrian Electronic Army.”

UPDATE, 1:45 p.m.: The same group is now claiming credit for the AP hack. For what it’s worth, the celebratory tweet does not fit AP Style either.

Filed Under: ap style, associated press, barack obama, hack, twitter, white house,