When Tim Russert died on June 13, NBC held off reporting the news for almost two hours and asked other TV networks to hold off reporting it so that his family vacationing in Italy could be notified first. However, long before Mr. Russert’s death was reported on air, it was on the Web, Twitter, and Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia entry on Mr. Russert’s page was updated at 3:01 p.m., forty minutes before NBC made the announcement on air. His biography had the date of this death and it was rewritten in the past tense. Many journalists had heard something had happened to Mr. Russert but did not know the outcome because of the black out. So, when they searched for news on Tim Russert online many ended up on his Wikipedia page and learned the details of this death. Someone from IBS, a news reporting service had posted the entry.

The word quickly spread that the details of this death were posted on Wikipedia. However, as many landed on his Wikipedia page there we no details of this death. What happened? According to Wikipedia’s records, 11 minutes after the first entry, someone working at IBS had deleted the date of death and turned all the past tenses back to present tenses.

IBS says a “junior-level employee” changed the Wikipedia entry to reflect Russert’s death because he or she thought it was common knowledge. When NBC discovered the entry, and freaked out, someone else at IBS deleted the date of Russert’s death and changed all of the verb tenses back.

IBS also said that the company had taken the necessary measures against the junior-level employee and apologized to NBC. NBC News said it was told the employee was fired.

The world has changed tremendously in the past 5 years. Today in the age of blogs, Wikipedia, MySpace, and Twitter, the news services do not have the same control they had even as recently as the build up to the Iraq war. Was the employee told about the news black out? What if the employee had learned of the news via Twitter from a friend? What should company policy be on such things. What if someone else that learned about it on Twitter went public with the information? The media is not the only party that has lost control; so have all of us. Every time each of us uses a search engine, for example, we have created a record that is not in our control. What are your thoughts?