About 1:30 AM on Wednesday morning, a tweet was published purportedly belonging to an account of Ammon Bundy, who, along with a couple of dozen others, are occupying a wildlife refuge in Oregon.

The tweet was, to say the least, controversial.

We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks did. We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom.

— Ammon Bundy (@Ammon_Bundy) January 6, 2016

Needless to say, liberals' heads exploded all over Twitterland, and Bundy was denounced by both sides for his inapt analogy.

But after the media storm subsided, it was revealed that Ammon Bundy did not send the tweet.  In fact, Bundy's brother said he isn't even on Twitter.

Much hilarity ensued as the media began to backtrack furiously.

The account was created after the standoff began and Ammon Bundy became a media fixture, and, despite racking up over 4,000 followers, doesn’t have many tweets on its timeline. Right now, half a day after the infamous Rosa Parks tweet, the count is only at 61. The profile picture is a screenshot from a video of Ammon Bundy — one used in many parody accounts — whereas if it was actually Bundy’s account, he would probably use his own photo of himself. And the account is unverified, which means that Twitter doesn’t confirm that the person whose name is on the account is indeed the person writing the tweets. Without that, and without verbal confirmation from Bundy himself, there’s no way to confirm that the words on Twitter can be attributed to the person in real life.

In fact, as early as 7:19 a.m. this morning, the same New York Daily News exploding in outrage over the tweet reported that Ammon Bundy’s brother, Ryan Bundy, categorically denied that Ammon was behind the tweet — and said that his brother isn’t on Twitter at all. Tony Dokoupil, an MSNBC reporter who’s been covering the Oregon standoff on the ground, also tweeted that the account was fake early this morning.

As Ammon Bundy and company's occupation of federal land enters a fifth day, a note for all: he's not on twitter. @Ammon_Bundy is not him.

— tonydokoupil (@tonydokoupil) January 6, 2016

What's amazing to me is that no one in the media thought to ask Ammon Bundy for a comment on the tweet.  If they had, they obviously would have discovered the hoax.  So they have only themselves to blame for being lazy and biased in their reporting.

In other words, business as usual.