“Targeted” is the new “hacked,” thanks to CCTV News, which issued this statement via Twitter at 9:33 this morning:

The CCTVNEWS Twitter account was targeted on Oct. 21st and used illegally to post incorrect information copied from other sources. The unauthorized information was deleted.

CCTV News is referring to this tweet sent yesterday evening about Zhou Yongkang, a former Standing Committee member believed to be under investigation for corruption. The “other sources,” presumably, is SCMP, which ran an article — accuracy unverified, considering its unnamed sources, etc. — stating Xi Jinping has set up a “special unit” to carry out its Zhou probe.

There’s a lot going on in the latest CCTV News tweet, so let’s parse a little.

The reason so many people — celebrities and athletes and politicians, mostly — say they were “hacked” is because hacked is such a vague term that it covers all scenarios, from a friend snatching your phone and sending a tweet to an actual hacker breaking into your account (the latter rarely happens; at best, fools get phished). But “targeted”? Sounds outright conspiratorial. Devious agents slink betwixt cubicle shadows in CCTV’s office.

“Used illegally” also raises some eyebrows. It’s gratutious phrasing, isn’t it? After all, we all know that spreading incorrect information on social media equals JAIL TIME. Anyway, if you offend official state media, of course you’re breaking the law as well, which everyone knows.

Finally, it’s so like state media to use the term “unauthorized information.” There are no universal truths in the world they live in, no “facts.” There is only that which is authorized — a reality forged by the sheer will of propagandists and harmony architects — and that which is not. God have mercy on those who insist on believing the latter.

As reported last month, former security chief Zhou Yongkang, now retired, has been the target of high-level corruption probes since at least late August. “How far and high is [Xi Jinping] willing to go to clean up China’s political elite?” the New York Times’s Chris Buckley asked in a September 25 article.

Now we kind of know. The South China Morning Post reported today, citing unnamed sources, that Xi Jinping is overseeing a “special unit” to investigate Zhou, “bypassing the Communist Party’s internal disciplinary apparatus.”

Beijing police chief Fu Zhenghua will report directly to Xi, according to police and graft watchdog sources. Fu is the first person in the party’s history to also hold the concurrent posts of head of Beijing’s armed police, the Standing Committee member of the party’s Beijing municipal committee and deputy minister of public security.

This news was partially confirmed by none other than CCTV News’s Twitter account at around 5:30 pm.

RT @cctvnews: President Xi Jinping has set up a special unit to investigate corruption allegations against the retired leader Zhou Yongkang.

— tania branigan (@taniabranigan) October 21, 2013

And then, predictably, it was unconfirmed, as the tweet was deleted — just as Western journalists were spitting out Coca-Colas* en masse onto their keyboards.

Now you see it, now you don't: @cctvnews has deleted Zhou tweet

— tania branigan (@taniabranigan) October 21, 2013

*We figure 5:30 is pretty late for coffee or tea.

“Why deletion?” is probably the less interesting of the two questions we can ask. There seem to be many good ways to break a story about an unprecedented investigative unit for a former Chinese leader who happened to be of the most powerful and divisive figures on the Politburo Standing Committee; Twitter is not one of them.

How did the tweet ever get sent?

So @cctvnews has deleted and de-confirmed the tweet on Zhou Yongkang being investigated. Was the tweet the mistake of an intern?

— Jeremy Goldkorn 金玉米 (@goldkorn) October 21, 2013

What if @cctvnews was tweeting the Zhou Yongkang info from a 内参?

— Edward Wong (@comradewong) October 21, 2013

(内参 refers to internal — and confidential — government documents.)

It’s unlikely we’ll find out. But this seems like a reasonable bet:

Safe prediction: @cctvnews will be the most aggressively boring twitter account for the foreseeable future.

— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) October 21, 2013

Although you should probably start following the Twitter accounts of state media anyway, just in case. There must be a whole bunch of interns there, always a click away from making news.

(Above image via George Chen)

UDPATE, 10/22, 10:09 am: CCTV News says it was “targeted.”

CCTVNEWS Statement pic.twitter.com/B0iinrjXvt

— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) October 22, 2013