Voice of America Prepared Obituaries for Castro, Yeltsin, Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Marion Barry & Others
Saturday, February 12, 2005 at 02:36AM Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the
Voice of America - the US government's news outlet to the rest of the
world since 1942 - released its audio obituaries for two world leaders
who aren't dead: Fidel Castro and Boris Yeltsin.
After receiving the cassettes, DC-area researcher Michael Ravnitzky
asked for other advance obituaries, but VOA has refused to comply,
saying that releasing their Castro and Yeltsin obits was a mistake. In
fact, they will no longer send these two obituaries to requesters, a
clear violation of FOIA law. However, they did provide a list of
prominent figures for whom they've already written (and in some cases
recorded) obituaries. Under FOIA in April 2000, the VOA released a list
of other famous people for whom it had prepared obituaries in advance.
(Note that in the intervening almost-five years, some of these figures
have died.) Among many others on this are Louis Farrakhan, Marion
Barry, Ron Dellums, Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume and Ralph Nader.
- See the Lists and Listen to the Obituaries at the MemoryHole [here]
Links:
Voice of America website
somewhat related: CNN's premature obits for Castro, Cheney, the Pope, et al.