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So What Fox Story Was the Secret Service Monitoring?

The answer is more obvious than you might think.

The internet was ablaze this evening with the embarrassing story of the Secret Service accidentally tweeting an anti-Fox News message characterizing the outlet's coverage as "blathering." The tweet, which was meant to be sent out on an employee's personal account, said that the Secret Service had to "monitor Fox for a story." That raises the question: What story?

Fox has a pretty good idea.

In a post about the incident on a Fox News blog, the outlet conjectures the Secret Service was looking to see how Fox covered the story of Vito LaPinta, the 13-year-old Tacoma, WA boy questioned by the Secret Service for posting a Facebook message about Obama (read that story here). This is what Fox had to say:

Shortly after 3 p.m. Wednesday, the Secret Service's account declared on the social media site: "Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can't. Deal. With. The. Blathering."

The posting was quickly removed, but within a half-hour dozens of other Twitter users had already begun re-posting -- or "re-Tweeting" -- the message.

[...]

Earlier in the day, Fox News had been covering the story of Vito LaPinta, the 13-year-old from Tacoma, Wash., who was recently visited by a Secret Service agent for posting a message on Facebook suggesting President Obama should watch out for terrorist attacks in the wake of Usama bin Laden's killing. LaPinta's mother was not present when the Secret Service interviewed her son, a move she decried as inappropriate.

For the record, LaPinta's story did get some coverage on TV, but not an inordinate amount. It only garnered one post on Foxnews.com that actually linked out to a local news report.

As a side note, the Secret Service did not respond to the local Fox station's request for comment regarding its handling of the young boy's case. But, within only hours of the errant tweet, it did issue a statement announcing the Twitter message was an accident.

The obvious question now is: Will the Secret Service assign someone on Thursday to monitor Fox's coverage of the flubbed monitoring?

I have a guess.

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