New York Post Employee Blasts Explicit Headlines on Social Media

The New York Post's website and Twitter pages Thursday posted violent, racist, and sexually explicit headlines, and the paper said an employee had gone rogue.

The posts attacked a variety of political figures, including President Joe Biden, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and both candidates in New York's heated gubernatorial race, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Among the headlines were "We must assassinate AOC for America," and the Post noted it was not the result of a hack, but someone who published "unauthorized" content from the newspaper's internal publishing system, The New York Times reported Thursday afternoon.

"The New York Post's investigation indicates that the unauthorized conduct was committed by an employee, and we are taking appropriate action," an email statement to the Times read.

Originally the Post had assumed the unauthorized headlines were the result of the work of a hacker.

"We've taken down the vile and reprehensible content posted by the hackers and continue to investigate the cause," a spokesperson for the newspaper told CNBC, confirming the attack. The posts were removed quickly and the Post's website was operating like usual by the middle of the morning.

The headlines that were posted had photographs but did not have links that connected to articles.

The headlines targeting Biden and his son Hunter, as well as Ocasio-Cortez, were said to be violent and explicit, while another headline aimed at New York City Mayor Eric Adams was racist.

Spokespeople for Biden, Adams, Ocasio-Cortez, and Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., the GOP candidate in the race for governor, did not respond to requests for comment but a representative for New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul was quick to slam the newspaper for the content.

"The New York Post has long fostered an ugly, toxic conversation on their front pages and social accounts, but these posts are more disgusting and vile than usual," the representative for Hochul said. "The New York Post needs to immediately explain how this reprehensible content was made public.

"While the Post has made its preferences very clear in the New York governor's race, there is no room for this violent, sexist rhetoric in our politics. We demand answers."

WordPress, the content management system the Post uses for publishing, refused to "comment on active investigations" or to speak on the newspaper's behalf.

The Post hack comes after an attack on the publication Fast Company, which was forced in late September to shut down its website when hackers sent out "obscene and racist" notifications to Apple News users.

The company, also a WordPress customer, suspended its website and later said it had hired a global incident response and cybersecurity firm to investigate the online attack.

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