News Outlets Report Death of Congresswoman -- When Still Alive

By: Greg Mitchell Leading news outlets reported today that Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a Democratic congresswoman, had died -- when she was still alive though in critical condition. The outlets included her hometown Cleveland Plain Dealer, The New York Times, CBS News, Fox News, The Associated Press, Bloomberg and many others.

Her family later announced her death, at 6:12 PM ET. An early afternoon AP alert declared her passing. The New York Times headline on the Web announced: "Ohio Congresswoman Dies."

The Plain Dealer now reports: "Officials updated her condition this afternoon after conflicting reports that the congresswoman was dead. Numerous media outlets - including The Plain Dealer on its Web site cleveland.com, CNN and the Associated Press - reported that Tubbs Jones had died." The Plain Dealer had quickly published a look back at her life.

Numerous sites scrubbed their original stories.

Susan Goldberg, the Plain Dealer editor, told E&P's Joe Strupp this afternoon, "We are deeply concerned that we did not have it right at the time we reported it....We had multiple trusted sources who told us she was brain dead. Congress was told by a high-ranking congressional official and we had people both here and in Washington telling us this."

Ben Pershing, at the Washington Post's Capitol Briefing blog, has already offered a mea culpa: "An already sad story on the serious medical condition of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) was made embarrassingly worse today by Capitol Briefing and other news outlets, as conflicting information prompted several erroneous reports that the lawmaker had died. As of this writing, she remains in critical condition in a Cleveland hospital....

"Based on information from a reliable Democratic source and stories from other news outlets, Capitol Briefing reported at 2:10 p.m. that Tubbs Jones had died. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Associated Press, and CNN came out with similar reports at the same time, all based on anonymous sources. At that point, neither Tubbs Jones's office nor the hospital had confirmed her death.

"But then a doctor at the hospital said Tubbs Jones was alive but in critical condition. According to AP: 'Dr. Gus Kious says the 58-year-old Tubbs Jones suffered a brain hemorrhage in an inaccessible part of her brain and that a team of doctors who evaluated her determined she has limited brain function.' The Plain-Dealer revised its report. AP moved the following, unfortunately-worded update: 'Kill the APNewsAlert saying U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones has died. A doctor says she is in critical condition.'

"It is not clear why Capitol Briefing's source and those cited by other news organizations believed she had died, though it may be related to confusion over a report in the Plain-Dealer saying she had been taken off life-support. Capitol Briefing apologizes for the error and will be more careful as he continues to report this story."

The AP reported that its source had been a Democratic official.
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Greg Mitchell is editor of E&P. His new book on Iraq and the media is titled "SO WRONG FOR SO LONG."