At 1:07 p.m. on Tuesday, the Twitter feed of the Associated Press told us that Barack Obama had been injured in an explosion at the White House. The tweet was fake — the product of a hack — but given the events in Boston last week, the news spread like wildfire, garnering more that 4,000 retweets.
The AP quickly addressed the situation, suspending its Twitter account, and alerting readers through associated accounts that the tweet describing an explosion at the White House was the result of a hack. No harm, no foul, right?
