CNN Accidentally Posts Pre-Death Celebrity Obits
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2003 11:18 am
CNN Accidentally Posts Pre-Death Celebrity Obits
POSTED: 2:25 p.m. EDT April 17, 2003
NEW YORK -- CNN says human error is to blame for posting of obituaries on its Web site of some famous figures who aren't dead.
The mock-ups were meant only for internal review, but the public got access to them after password protection was disabled.
A CNN spokeswoman says the cause is being investigated.
Another Web site, The Smoking Gun, has posted copies of the CNN mock-ups, for Vice President Dick Cheney, former President Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul the Second, among others.
News organizations routinely prepare obituaries on prominent figures so they can be released quickly upon word of such a death.
The CNN mock-ups did not say exactly that the subject had died, although they had a placeholder for the year of death, which was said to be 2001. They also referred to the subjects in the past tense.
POSTED: 2:25 p.m. EDT April 17, 2003
NEW YORK -- CNN says human error is to blame for posting of obituaries on its Web site of some famous figures who aren't dead.
The mock-ups were meant only for internal review, but the public got access to them after password protection was disabled.
A CNN spokeswoman says the cause is being investigated.
Another Web site, The Smoking Gun, has posted copies of the CNN mock-ups, for Vice President Dick Cheney, former President Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul the Second, among others.
News organizations routinely prepare obituaries on prominent figures so they can be released quickly upon word of such a death.
The CNN mock-ups did not say exactly that the subject had died, although they had a placeholder for the year of death, which was said to be 2001. They also referred to the subjects in the past tense.
