K24 television was on Friday forced to apologise after a tweet on its official page claimed that the Supreme Court would uphold the general election results, hours before the ruling.
The Tweet, posted at around 1pm, claimed April 9 would be a “holiday” signifying the swearing in of President-elect Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto.
“Supreme Court ends last hearing on a Good Friday. Finally tomorrow in their judgment they will uphold the elections – April 9th is holiday,” read the hastily deleted tweet.
The station quickly offered an apology, claiming its account had been hacked and that they had reported the issue to the police.
“Sorry people. Our account was hacked; ignore any Twitter updates that you see from @K24Tv. We have reported the hacking incident to Twitter and they are working on it! We will be back as soon as we sort out the problem. We apologise again for this unfortunate incident and Tweets,” the company said in its apology.
According to statistics from Opinion Yetu the post was retweeted over 109 times, continuing to pass the message even after it had been deleted.
The social media strategy company says the Tweet also resulted in the broadcaster topping the TV broadcasters’ social media mentions on the same day, with it receiving more than double that of its nearest competitor with 3,436 mentions.
However a few people remained skeptical as to whether the company’s account had been hacked or whether it was a sabotage job from the inside carried out by one of its employees.
Others further questioned whether the incident demonstrated that the outcome of the case was decided before the trial had even taken place.
So K24 had access to the ruling. Same thing they tweeted is what happened. #DemocracyOnTrial
— Robert Alai (@RobertAlai) March 30, 2013
