“The story, marked ‘Hold for release – Do not use’, was sent in error to the news service’s thousands of corporate clients,” Matthew Moore reports for The Telegraph. “The stock obituary was published ‘momentarily’ after a routine update by a reporter, and was ‘immediately deleted’, Bloomberg said.”
“Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, but there is no suggestion that the news wire has recent news on his health,” Moore reports. “Most media organizations regularly update their pre-prepared obituaries of newsworthy figures. The obituary contained blank spaces for Jobs’s age and cause of death to be inserted.”
Read the full article here.
Caroline McCarthy reports for CNET, “It’s not out of the ordinary at all that Bloomberg would have this written; all major news outlets have notable persons’ obituaries prepared in advance so that only minor changes need be made at the actual time of death. That way, the news can be reported almost immediately and can be updated with further detail.
But a Jobs obituary, however premature, is more chilling than, say, a Bill Gates obituary.”
“So given a CEO whose health has been discussed so speculatively in the echo chamber of the blogosphere, and whose company’s stock has been shown to be far from immune to the influence of the rumor mill, the appearance–however brief–of a Jobs obituary online must certainly have been disquieting for those who stumbled upon it,” McCarthy reports.
McCarthy reports, “Bloomberg released a retraction later on Wednesday that made only the vaguest of reference to the content of the gaffe. ‘An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today,’ the retraction read. ‘The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Vague Nomenclature” and “Adam W.” for the heads up.]
Once upon a time, they said Apple was “dead,” too.
Um, hello, SEC? We have a few questions:
• How does a text update get “mistakenly” posted live online at Bloomberg, exactly?
• Did anyone profit from this “mistake?”
• If so, are they connected in any way to those who “mistakenly” posted this story at Bloomberg?