Tom petty dead update#
Tom petty dead full#

(This remained unconfirmed and, according to his daughter, untrue.) The news was that the internet was awash in confusion about whether or not he had died. Meanwhile, the rocker's daughter slammed Rolling Stone on her Instagram account, where she stated 'my dad is not dead yet but your fucking magazine is.'īy late afternoon, the news wasn't that Petty had died. In the confusion of the afternoon, CBS and other outlets revised their headlines to confusing things like 'LAPD Clarifies It Cannot Confirm Tom Petty's Death.' Petty's official social media channels remained silent. We apologize for any inconvenience in this reporting.- LAPD HQ October 2, 2017 (2/2) However, the LAPD has no investigative role in this matter. (It's standard practice for media outlets to await reliable confirmation before reporting a notable person's death, though newspapers often have obituaries prewritten and filed away.) Twitter, which was already on high emotion after the Las Vegas massacre, went into celebrity-death grief mode.Īround 1 p.m., CBS News announced, 'Rocker Tom Petty is dead at 66, Los Angeles Police Department confirms to CBS News.'

Tom petty dead update#

At 12:30 p.m., the tabloid site added to its post with a grim update on Petty's condition: 'We're told after Petty got to the hospital, he had no brain activity and a decision was made to pull life support.' Hopes of recovery seemed bleak.īy this point, arts journalists around the country began prepping obituaries and reaching out to Petty's representatives. (TMZ was famously the first to report Prince's death, in 2016.)Ĭlearly, TMZ had a well-placed source. Despite its fast-and-loose tabloid style, TMZ is known for being the first to report major celebrity deaths and is taken seriously by many major news organizations.

Tom petty dead full#

#BREAKING Tom Petty Rushed To Hospital In Full Cardiac Arrest - TMZ October 2, 2017 The episode began around noon PST with an alarming tweet from TMZ: Related: Tom Petty was a brilliant songwriter and a titan of classic rock radio How did the media botch Petty's death so badly? It was a bizarre debacle for digital journalism-and an unsettling experience for fans trying to determine whether their favorite singer had passed. But when the earliest obituaries began surfacing Monday afternoon, Petty's daughter insisted that her father was still alive-an embarrassing turn of events for news outlets who rushed to publish and then had to retract reports that the musician had died. The sad news was confirmed Monday evening by his manager and representatives. To be clear, Petty-the legendary heartland rocker behind indelible hits like 'Breakdown' and 'I Won't Back Down'-really is now dead.

These notable figures have one thing in common: They were all pronounced dead prematurely by media or internet sources before they actually died.