RFI involuntarily publishes several obituaries on its site

RFI illustration photo.

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It is a technical incident that many journalists and editorial staff fear.

Monday, November 16, RFI radio unwittingly published on its site a whole series of “obituaries” put in the “marble”, which designate in journalistic jargon these biographies prepared in advance in the event of the death of a personality.

This is how the former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, the poet Édouard Maunick, the former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius or the actor Clint Eastwood found themselves "dead" before their time, causing many very surprised reactions from Internet users.

Big big mess

Many necro written in advance are online on @rfi and Google, docile, has indexed everything: https: //t.co/elQV5l2izM pic.twitter.com/xWXvyTVimK

- marc rees (@reesmarc) November 16, 2020

@RFI has therefore decided to end 2020 at once.

# necro #boulettes pic.twitter.com/1KwysWuGEv

- Bertrand Hadet (@bertrandhadet) November 16, 2020

"Responsiveness"

A few hours after the start of the incident, RFI issued a press release to explain this "technical problem" and to apologize.

"As in all media, RFI journalists prepare portraits of personalities in advance, so that, if they were to disappear, they can reactively disseminate all the information they need to know about their career," explains the media.

At 5:00 p.m., the incident caused by the preparation of a migration of the site's content management tool was "being resolved".

An internal investigation was opened to "determine precisely the causes" of the problem, says RFI.

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