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Fox Digital statement on hacked Twitter account

By April MacIntyre Jul 4, 2011, 17:46 GMT

05/26/2011 - Dmitri Medvedev, Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy - 2011 G8 Summit of Deauville - French President Nicolas Sarkozy Welcomes the Heads of States - May 26, 2011 - La Touques Thoroughbred Racecourse - Deauville, France © Pixplanete / PR Photos

The Twitter account for Fox News was allegedly hacked, with six tweets falsely reporting early Monday morning that U.S. President Barack Obama had been shot twice in an Iowa restaurant while campaigning.

The tweets were posted between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Eastern Time by the "foxnewspolitics" account.

The account has been verified by Twitter for authenticity.

National media outlets in the U.S., including Fox News itself, carried no such reports. Fox News ran a story on its website acknowledging the hack, saying it "regrets any distress the false tweets may have created." The false tweets came on a major U.S. holiday, Independence Day.

The first tweet about the assassination -- addressed directly to Obama's real account -- said "@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead."

Jeff Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital, emailed Monsters and Critics a statement:

"FoxNews.com is working with Twitter to address the situation as quickly as possible."

"We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts," Misenti said in his email.