Obama: Fox News Killed Me

The news came right in the middle of the U.S. national holiday celebrations. The 34,000 followers of one of Fox News’ Twitter accounts, Fox News Politics, exclusively learned of the death of Barack Obama. The first tweet read: “@Barack Obama has just passed. The president is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead.”

A few minutes later, as if it were a live event being reported, a second post confirmed: “He was shot twice in the lower pelvic area and in the neck,” while the post following specified that the attack took place “at a Ross’ restaurant in Iowa while campaigning.” A final tweet was written: “We wish @Joe Biden the best of luck as our new president of the United States. In such a time of madness, there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

Obviously, the news was false.

Fox News — the network that would certainly have wished that the news was true — issued a press release condemning the tweets as “malicious and false,” but 10 hours had passed between the first message and Fox News’ response. The group of hackers responsible for the hoax, the Script Kiddies, said they chose Fox News “because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting.” Good point.

The member of Script Kiddies who spoke to a student newspaper to claim responsibility for the hijacking of Fox’s Twitter account explained that some members of this group were close to anonymous, the computer hackers set about U.S. government and credit card sites after the arrest of Julian Assange in England.

Because of the seriousness of this false information, the U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the president, immediately held a meeting with its officials. “We are investigating the matter and will be conducting appropriate follow-up.”

This information is all the more serious as — as noted by Ronald Kessler in his best seller In the President’s Secret Service — the serious threats against Barack Obama have jumped 400 percent in a country where extremist rhetoric from the tea party, led by Sarah Palin and her supporters, has caused a sensation since the attack against Gabrielle Giffords, representative of Arizona.