The Associated Press published a hoax article on Wednesday that claimed General Electric donated $3.2 billion in tax refunds to the U.S. Treasury.
The article centered around public outcry that GE, America’s largest corporation, didn’t pay a penny in income taxes last year after reporting a profit of $14 billion.
The phony article claimed that GE was donating the $3.2 billion refund in response to the bad publicity it received once word got out about their federal income tax.
According to the web site BusinessInsider.com, the fake release was emailed to the AP, including a GE logo and a link to a website designed to look like GE’s.
The AP published an article based on the release then realizing they’d been had, withdrew the story 35 minutes after publishing it and advised their customers that the story was a hoax.
The hoax itself was bad enough, but the fact that the Associated Press never bothered to ensure its validity is particularly embarrassing.
Take a look at the screen shot of the story and notice how many times readers had liked it on Facebook and Tweeted it.
The AP got what they deserved because they failed to do what any legitimate news organization should have done – ensure the news they were reporting was factual.
