MONTREAL - A Montreal newspaper is filing a complaint with police after someone hacked its website and posted a fake story announcing the death of Quebec's premier.
The website of Le Devoir was tampered overnight with a story announcing the death of Premier Jean Charest, one that spread quickly through social media.
Newspaper officials shut down the site and posted a note correcting the hoax report early Tuesday morning.
The premier joked about the story when he saw reporters. He said he first heard the news while exercising.
"I hurried to the mirror to see if I was still there," he said, drawing laughs from reporters. "As you can see, I'm in fine shape."
Charest also quipped that he's been written off many times — politically, at least — before bouncing back.
"This isn't the first time Le Devoir announces my death — but it's the first time they've covered it from this angle," he said.
On a more serious note, Charest thanked the newspaper for dealing with the problem so quickly.
The paper's management says it is investigating how it was hacked. It also apologized to Charest and its readers and announced it will file a complaint with police.
According to the fake report, Charest was admitted to a Montreal hospital after a heart attack and was soon pronounced dead.
The fake report went to some lengths to dupe readers into believing the news: it was written in a standard journalistic style, using a professional photo, official-looking fonts and even the byline of one of the newspaper's reporters.
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A false story about the death of Quebec Premier Jean Charest was posted overnight Monday on Le Devoir website. The Le Devoir site was also down this morning.
According to various reports, the posting on the French-language website lit up social media networks, forcing communications representatives for Charest to tell QMI that he was alive and well, adding that the hacking and posting of the story was in bad taste.
The fake article, according to Canoe, said that Charest had a heart attack overnight, also citing a confirmation from a hospital.
Here's a screenshot taken just after 1 a.m.
Le Devoir’s official Twitter account tweeted about the hacking, as did one of its journalists, Antoine Robitaille.
L'information concernant le décès de Jean Charest est fausse, notre site a été piraté.
Reply
LeDevoir
LEDEVOIR.COM A ÉTÉ PIRATÉ. LA DIRECTION TENTE DE RÉGLER LE PROBLÈME ET A PRIS CONTACT AVEC LE BUREAU DE JEAN CHAREST.
Reply
Ant_Robitaille
Last month, a Twitter account of Fox News was hacked, and tweets were sent out saying President Barack Obama was assassinated.
And here is more reaction to the hacking.