The New York Post said Thursday an employee was responsible for multiple offensive social media posts and articles published on the company’s Twitter account and website involving political assassinations and sexual violence.
The Post first said on Twitter it fell victim to a hack and later told The Washington Times an employee was the cause of the problem.
“The New York Post’s investigation indicates that the unauthorized conduct was committed by an employee, and we are taking appropriate action,” a Post spokesperson said in an email. “This morning, we immediately removed the vile and reprehensible content from our website and social media accounts.”
The vandalism appeared aimed at falsely portraying the Post as supporting violent extremism against Democrats.
One post called for the assassination of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat. Another post falsely said New York’s GOP gubernatorial candidate Rep. Lee Zeldin planned a sexually violent act against his Democratic opponent, incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul.
After the Post said it was hacked, Ms. Hochul’s spokeswoman Jen Goodman published a statement on Twitter demanding the newspaper explain what happened and denouncing the Post for fostering a toxic conversation.
Precisely how the Post employee compromised the company’s system remains unclear. The false posts appeared to take advantage of changing headlines of real articles on the company’s website that also generated automated social media posts carrying the offensive headlines to the newspaper’s Twitter following.
The Post is not the only news publisher that has fallen victim to internal hacking recently. Last month, business publication Fast Company said an employee caused racist and obscene push alerts to be sent to people’s devices via the Apple News platform.
• Staff writer Kerry Picket contributed to this article.
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