Is this the most poorly worded tweet of 2014?
BREAKING: Dutch military plane carrying bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash lands in Eindhoven.
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 23, 2014
As the world media watches the aftermath of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 incident, the Associated Press delivered a heartattack via Twitter to thousands of people with 15 words that seem to be confirming that a second crash had taken place.
In fact, no such crash happened. Instead, the AP was trying (failing) to articulate that the Dutch plane with the bodies from Flight 17 had landed in the Netherlands—normal landed, no crash involved.
The AP’s bizarre headline was retweeted thousands of times in a matter of minutes. Most of the initial response took the “crash lands” tweet literally.
“@AP: BREAKING: Dutch military plane carrying bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash lands in Eindhoven.” Seriously !?! WTF 😒
— badman™ (@Jay_McShorty) July 23, 2014
Soon, everyone realized what had actually happened.
Ok, @AP not hacked, just @AP terrible at writing tweets
— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) July 23, 2014
Dear @AP pic.twitter.com/d7fvFthCIi
— Steve Kovach (@stevekovach) July 23, 2014
We can all agree that it’s just too damn early for this kind of thing.
Photo via darkismus/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
