Hours before the death of veteran NBC newsman Tim Russert was announced by any broadcast
or cable news network on Friday, word of his passing took the form of changes on
Russert's Wikipedia listing, published reports observed today (Monday). The first
official news came from Russert's employer, NBC, when Tom Brokaw broke into programming
at 3:39 p.m. (NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams is currently on assignment
in Afghanistan.) However, the New York Times reported that the Wikipedia sit
e edited Russert's listing with word that he had died and began modifying his entry
more than a half hour earlier, at 3:01 p.m. The Times observed that the listing
was updated by someone whose IP address belongs to Internet Broadcast Systems, the
company that operates websites for NBC's owned-and-operated stations.
16/06/2008
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