Gawker brings us news of perhaps the biggest mainstream media gaffe of the year. Bloomberg financial newswire updated its 17-page obituary of Apple founder Steve Jobs and somehow inadvertently published it. This happened despite the news story bearing markers saying ?Hold for Release? and ?Do Not Use.?
It?s a pretty common, if not a little morbid, practice for news organizations to prepare obits well in advance of celebrities? actual death to save time. That?s particularly the case with mammoth opuses like Jobs? 17-page obit, almost approaching the length of a biographic novel.
In addition to publishing the obit, Bloomberg also accidentally published the list of people its reporters should contact when Steve Jobs does die. That list includes Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former veep Al Gore, (a member of Apple?s board of directors) and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Jobs is a survivor of pancreatic cancer and appears to have lost weight in recent months, leading to even more speculation about his health. While Jobs is very much alive, a few stockholders may have gone into cardiac arrest after reading the obit.
The Apple computer legend is far from the only celebrity to have this happen to them. The Smoking Gun was among the first to report about a 2003 CNN gaffe that allowed millions to see the pre-prepared obits for several very much alive celebs including Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and Dick Cheney. CNN also prematurely killed off Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford all of whom have passed on since the 2003 mixup. And probably the most famous, or infamous case was Mark Twain, who gave us the eternally awesome quote about reports of his death being greatly exaggerated.
Bloomberg caught the mistake and pulled the obit within minutes, but in today?s instant information culture the damage was already done. Now Jobs? obit is all over the web and if he so desires, he has the unique opportunity to read his own obituary. What do you think, readers? If something like this happened to you, would you read your own obit?
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