On 4 Oct 2007 at 18:21:07 -0600, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@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.
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On 4 Oct 2007 at 18:21:07 -0600, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@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.