It is commonplace for news organizations to maintain obituaries for public figures in its files, updating these as necessary. It is less common for such outlets to publish the obits till the figure actually dies — but it happens.
And happen again it did, this time for billionaire liberal activist George Soros (h/t Mediaite).
Reuters jumped the gun on Thursday afternoon, publishing their file obit for Soros with X’s in place of the missing numbers. (The headline for example notes that Soros’s age at the time of his passing was XX.)
The timestamp of the post, which has since been removed, is 5:41 p.m. Within an hour of the post, the wire service recognized its error, and published the following mea culpa:
Soros obituary published in error; financier is alive
Reuters erroneously published an advance obituary of financier and philanthropist George Soros. A spokesman for Soros said that the New York-based financier is alive and well. Reuters regrets the error.
