Monday, January 21, 2019

Media Prepping for Mortality: Ginsburg and MacArthur

As I write this, I have absolutely no knowledge of the state of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's health.

Unfortunately, someone at Fox News goofed, airing a notice that she had died.  As noted here, the network apologized.  I haven't followed this matter other than being aware that it happened.  But I don't doubt that there were folks out there accusing the network of wishing she actually was dead.

Aside from the slip-up, the people at Fox were simply doing what larger journalistic organizations do: preparing for certain future events.  A newspaper such as The New York Times has probably hundreds of canned obituaries ready for use when needed.  When a famous person dies, they simply add a few sentences citing the date of death and perhaps some surrounding circumstances.

And if the person is well known such as Justice Ginsburg, headlines are prepared.  I know this from past experience.

In March of 1964 I was in Tokyo for a week's temporary duty at Stars & Stripes, the armed forces overseas daily newspaper.  At that time General Douglas MacArthur was in failing health, and a S&S staffer was walking across the newsroom with a dummy front page with two-plus inch type announcing "MACARTHUR DIES."

As it happened, he hung on for nearly another month, but that headline or something similar was eventually used.

No comments:

Post a Comment