(2008-06-23) Russert Death Reporting Timing Issue

Tim Russert's death raised interesting issues. NBC, his employer, tried to hold off reporting his death an hour or so, so his family could be alerted (because they were vacationing in Italy).

• heart-attack in newsroom at 1:40pm

• arrived at hospital 2:23, pronounced dead shortly thereafter

• Wikipedia page first updated 3:01.

  • Looking at the detailed records of editing changes recorded by Wikipedia, it quickly emerged that the changes came from InternetBroadcastingServices, a company in St. Paul, Minn., that provides Web services to a variety of companies, including local NBC TV stations. An IBS spokeswoman said on Friday that "a junior-level employee made updates to the Wikipedia page upon learning of Mr. Russert's passing, thinking it was public record." She added that the company had "taken the necessary measures with the employee and apologized to NBC." NBC News said it was told the employee was fired. Is that true? That would be ridiculous.

    • Maybe this post will get updated to resolve this.

  • 11 minutes later, according to Wikipedia records, someone at another IBS computer deleted the date of death and turned all the past tenses back to present tenses

• NBC reported it 3:39

How did that IBS employee find out?

Do we think someone else wouldn't have distributed the same info, through some other channel with "leakage" shortly thereafter?

Jul07 update: there's further confirmation that employee was only temporarily suspended. (Though the person doesn't seem to have been named, so this is all third-hand.)