The Associated Press published a story based on a fake press release yesterday, Business Insider reported, claiming that General Electric would repay its entire $3.2 billion tax refunds to the US Treasury. Thirty-five minutes later, after some news outlets had already picked up the story, AP withdrew the article and advised its customers that it was a hoax. "The AP did not follow its own standards in this case for verifying the authenticity of a news release," said AP Business Editor Hal Ritter, according to ABC News.

A grassroots movement called US Uncut, working together with the notorious activist-prankster group the Yes Men, soon took credit for the hoax. The collective's spokesperson said that the intention was to bring more public attention to corporations that avoid paying taxes. "For a brief moment people believed that the biggest corporate tax dodger had a change of heart and actually did the right thing," the spokesperson said in a statement published on the Yes Men's website.

The hoax comes at an embarrassing time for the GE as last month The New York Times ran an extensive article about the corporation, concentrating on its tax-avoidance strategy in particular. Understandably, this resulted in plenty of bad publicity for GE. However, even though the prank momentarily affected GE's shares, as the ABC noted, Forbes's Giovanni Rodrigues speculated that the biggest victims of the media stunt were in fact AP and other news outlets that fell for the hoax.

Poynter's Jim Romenesko presented examples of earlier similar pranks, remarking that this is not the first time that news outlets are fooled by hoaxers. It has been pointed out that too often news agencies rely on press releases, failing to carry out sufficient fact-checking. This case serves to remind news outlets of the importance of a thorough source verification process.

Sources: Business Insider, ABC News, the Yes Men, The New York Times, ABC, Forbes, Poynter