{"id":3614,"date":"2013-06-28T06:42:10","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T06:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.am\/on-media-vultures-and-nelson-mandelas-reported-death\/"},"modified":"2013-06-28T06:42:10","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T06:42:10","slug":"on-media-vultures-and-nelson-mandelas-reported-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/verified\/2013\/06\/28\/3614\/","title":{"rendered":"On “Media Vultures” and Nelson Mandela’s Reported Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nelson Mandela’s “death” became the phantom of the Internet yesterday. No one has any actual facts, but they are all “killing” him. <\/p>\n

At 10:55 pm on Jun. 27, Tert.am conveys the news of Mandela’s death, citing The Guardian<\/em> as the source of the news. I go to The Guardian<\/em>‘s official website and I see that there has been some improvement in the former President of South Africa’s health condition.<\/p>\n

CNN likewise writes nothing about what happened with Mandela. To be more precise, it writes<\/a> that South African President Zuma said Mandela’s condition improved and that his situation “remains critical but is now stable.”<\/p>\n

From the Russian sites, RIA Novosti doesn’t even write about that: on the night of  Jun. 27, one of the most authoritative Russian news sites has no \u2014 absolutely no \u2014 news about Mandela. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, leading Russian news sites have quoted Mandela’s daughter as saying that her father might die at any moment. <\/p>\n

While The Guardian<\/em>‘s official website continues to report improvements in Mandela’s health, Tert.am removes the news about Mandela’s death from its pages. <\/p>\n

At that time, 10:55 pm, when the website had published news of the Nobel laureate’s death, the news was replaced with another news story: “Tevez: I told Pellegrini that I want to go away<\/a>“. It sounds like a verdict for suicide \u2014 “I want to go away” sounding like “I want to die” [the same phrase for both is used in Armenian]. But for us, the topic is about someone’s death, which is not a fact. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

GalaTV.am also takes the bait of Mandela’s death. It rushed to spread the news on Facebook \u2014 also citing The Guardian<\/em> as the source. It’s clear as day that no one has seen the news with his or her own eyes. Because a short while later GalaTV.am also removes the news about Mandela’s death from its website. <\/p>\n

While Tert.am and GalaTV.am are editing out that which didn’t happen, iLur.am reports about the death of the anti-apartheid icon, citing The Guardian Express<\/a> (which has nothing to do with The Guardian; they are different news outlets). iLur.am found this news on the Russian site Utro.ru, which, indeed, informs readers that Mandela’s relatives have agreed to pull the plug on the 94-year-old politician’s life support machine. Now it’s clear what “The Guardian” we’re talking about \u2014 it’s The Guardian Express<\/em>, which some time after reporting Mandela’s death is “disconnected” from the Internet (the site was not functioning normally).<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

During that time, The Guardian Express<\/em>‘s top news is reflected neither in the Nelson Mandela entry on the English-language Wikipedia website nor by The Times<\/em>, which two hours after Mandela’s “death” features on its front page only one Mandela-related news story: Obama saying Mandela’s legacy will endure through the ages<\/a>. It’s clear that he’s talking about someone who is on his way out but who is not gone.  <\/p>\n

Four hours later, The Guardian Express<\/em> updates its news, now with a question mark<\/a>. But this is nothing \u2014 The Guardian Express<\/em> writes a new headline for an old news story. <\/p>\n

None of the Armenian news outlets noticed that this website edited the headline of its day-old news story. The news was originally published on Jun. 26. Utro.ru, meanwhile, without noticing this detail, takes the story and republishes it a day later \u2014 which is then picked up by the other news sites in Armenia that find out through Utro.ru about that which didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

The Guardian Express<\/em>‘s readers, in comments about Mandela’s life and death left beneath the article, write: “The Guardian Express \u2013 maybe a bit too express?” and “It seems you have highly incredible sources or you’re highly irresponsible” for disseminating such news.<\/p>\n

It’s no surprise then that Mandela’s daughter Makaziwe has called<\/a> journalists “vultures,” who are “waiting when the lion has devoured the buffalo, waiting there for the last of the carcass.” <\/p>\n

Mher Arshakyan<\/strong><\/p>\n

P.S. Local news outlet Haykakan Zhamanak<\/em> (“Armenian Times”) also caught the bait. The newspaper in its  Jun. 28 issue published a news story with the headline “Mandela’s Dead” \u2014 also citing The Guardian<\/em>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nelson Mandela’s “death” became the phantom of the Internet yesterday. No one has any actual facts, but they are all “killing” him. <\/p>\n

At 10:55 pm on Jun. 27, Tert.am conveys the news of Mandela’s death, citing The Guardian<\/em> as the source of the news. I go to The Guardian<\/em>‘s official website and I see that there has been some improvement in the former President of South Africa’s health condition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique","category-verified"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}