3 October 2017

Dead, alive and dead again: how did the media get Tom Petty’s death so wrong?

How did CBS, Rolling Stone, PEOPLE, The Huffington Post and Variety end up claiming Petty had died hours before he had?

If you believe everything you read, Tom Petty died on Monday 2 October 2017 – and then miraculously came back to life a few hours later.

Tributes to Petty filled social and traditional media late on Monday, after several respected news outlets reported that Petty had passed away at age 66. At the time of those stories, Petty was still alive, albeit unconscious and unresponsive. This was, understandably, very upsetting for his family. “My dad is not dead yet but your fucking magazine is,” Petty’s daughter AnnaKim Violette wrote in an Instagram post aimed at Rolling Stone. He was taken off life support at 8.40pm PDT in the UCLA Santa Monica Hospital.