The Onion Live Tweeting Congress Hostage ‘Breaking News’ (POLL, VIDEO)
September 29, 2011 | Filed under: News | Posted by:
Satirical news publication The Onion broke the news on Twitter about an hour ago of a hostage situation involving Congress, but the story is not true and a number of Twitter users are saying it’s not funny. It all started with this tweet: @ TheOnion : BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building. That was quickly followed up by this: “BREAKING: Capitol building being evacuated. 12 children held hostage by group of armed congressmen.” Both tweets were retweeted more than 100 times. From there, The Onion continued to live tweet the “developments,” including a tweet about a congressman buying semi-automatic handguns. It also posted a fake news report on its website, which it also shared on Facebook. Capitol Police told the Washington Post in a statement, “Conditions at the U.S. Capitol are currently normal. There is no credibility to these stories or the twitter feeds. The U.S. Capitol Police are currently investigating the reporting.” At first, many thought The Onion had been hacked, including Slate’s Dave Weigel. MSNBC noted rightly it would be difficult to tell if The Onion was hacked, given its typical satirical news reports. The Onion has not yet publicly responded to complaints about the tweets. Read all the tweets so far below. What do you think?
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on September 29, 2011. Filed under