Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On 4 Oct 2007 at 18:21:07 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I think that he rejects the notion of using
obituaries in BLP's. ;-)
With the exception of some of the entries in
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_premature_obituaries> :)
I'm not sure any obituary that gets wrong the basic fact of whether
the person being written about is alive or dead is much of a reliable
source for other facts.
Some of the people on that list went to great efforts to fake their own
deaths. We can't require CSI-level investigative ability for sources to
be considered reliable or there'll be none. Others result from
obituaries that have been prepared ahead of time by news media
researchers, who are generally diligent about these things (the incident
in the original post of this thread aside), and the triggering of its
publication is the result of a screwup by someone else in the
organization who's not responsible for the actual contents.
There are lots of reasons why premature obituaries may still be quite
useful as sources.