Tom Reynolds

I’m really getting sick of everyone who jumps on the “CNN still has nothing about the death of Brittany Murphy. Why is it that I get all my news from Twitter now. CNN FAIL! LOL!” bandwagon every time a news story breaks.

Yes, Twitter “broke” the story that Brittany Murphy died. It also “broke” the story that Jeff Goldblum died. And Zach Braff. And Rick Astley. And Britney Spears. Wow. Twitter’s really on top of their shit, because I still haven’t heard the major news organizations cover these stories.

Twitter is just a way to decimate information quickly. Its not a reporter. They didn’t even break this story, TMZ did. And what was the story they broke? “BREAKING: Multiple sources are telling us Brittany Murphy died.” How? “Not important.” Are you sure? “Kinda-ish.”

Should CNN have run the story “According to gossip web sites and teenagers on Twitter, Brittany Murphy has died.” just so they wouldn’t be called an old fossil? Do people really think no one at CNN knew about this story and thats why they weren’t reporting it as opposed to just getting some baseline confirmation first?

No offense to Brittany Murphy, its always sad when someone dies young, but I don’t think CNN should risk its journalistic reputation to run a story without a source just because someone young and moderately famous died. Its sad, but its someone you didn’t know that was in movies you probably never saw. Its not breaking news, its just unexpected news on a slow news day.