Pele NOT dead, CNN's New Day Deletes Tweet

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Pele playing in 1960. (Credit: AFP/SCANPIX via Flickr)

CNN apologized after wrongly reporting on one of its Twitter accounts that soccer star Pele died.

CNN’s New Day tweeted, “#BREAKING: Brazilian former soccer player Pele dies at 74.” New Day is CNN’s morning show, featuring Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan, and Michaela Pereira.

Circa‘s editor-in-chief Anthony De Rosa captured a screenshot of the original tweet, The Hollywood Reporter and Russian site T Journal noted.

 


 

In follow-up tweets, CNN’s New Day reported that it deleted the tweet in question and that Pele is “alive and very well.”
 

 

 


 

The tweet was an error, not a hack, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which confirmed with a CNN spokesperson the account hadn’t been hacked.

CNN also tweeted an apology on its public relations Twitter account, Breitbart.com noted.

 

 

CNN’s Brazil bureau chief Shasta Darlington also tweeted that Pele was alive. She wrote that there were “rumors” of his death, but interestingly didn’t mention CNN had itself reported Pele was dead.


 

Another interesting Twitter discussion about the error came from CNN International reporter Isa Soares, who tweeted:
 

 

Anthony De Rosa responded to Soares, noting the obvious – that CNN itself was responsible for reporting on the fake death.


 

Soares rebutted that, writing
 

 

De Rosa then tweeted to her a photo of CNN reporting the false news, and she hasn’t apparently responded to this.

iMediaEthics has written to CNN asking how the error occurred. We’ll update with any additional information.

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Pele NOT dead, CNN’s New Day Deletes Tweet

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