14 DAY TRIAL // Football fans might have gotten a real shock yesterday, when the CNN, usually a reputable news agency, reported in a tweet that Pele, widely regarded as the best footballer in the history of the sport, had passed away.
This serious faux-pas does little to improve the reputation of the network, that has come seriously under fire recently for slip-ups such as this, deemed unprofessional and unbecoming for such a large agency.
The news of Pele's death was picked up by an online employee working on CNN's New Day morning show, who immediately tweeted it as a “breaking news” on Friday morning, 28 March, 2014.
However, it turned out that there wasn't any truth to that news and that the Brazilian former athlete was still very much alive and well. Before the news spread any further, some of the 55,000 Twitter fans of New Day had pointed out the inaccuracy, and the news show was forced to issue an apology, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The incriminating tweet was deleted, but not before Circa editor-in-chief Anthony De Rosa flagged it as false. New Day later posted, “We deleted an earlier and erroneous tweet on this topic. We regret the error and thank our followers for the feedback.”
It turns out Pele's representative personally contacted the CNN and set things straight, telling them that they had reported erroneously on his death.
Usually, in such cases of “celebrity deaths” that turn out to be false, internet hoaxes are to be blamed, which means that certain individuals seek to take advantage of people's interest in this or that celebrity and seek profit from shady techniques.
However, in this case, it turns out that there wasn't any hoax involved, just human error. Someone decided to broadcast the news without doing a proper and thorough check-up for the actual facts. It could be blamed on the need to be the first to report in today's media in order to get that “scoop,” or that overzealous drive to get an “exclusive.”
What is even sadder is the fact that this is not, by any means, an isolated case. Several popular actors, musicians, athletes or politicians have woken up in the morning to find themselves being plastered all over the news as dead. The current way he media works, it's easy for this type of news to get into a snowball effect.
Among those that have been affected most recently are “Seinfeld” actor Wayne Knight, Adam Sandler, Jim Carey, Joe Montana, Jackie Chan and Robert Duvall.