Aretha Franklin R.I.P. (March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018)*

If it is fake again she'll shoot it down.......we'll know it's real if she doesn't.

 

The story seems to be about how torn up Roger Friedman is about it. So torn up that he slapped "Exclusive!" on it and stuck it on the front of his website.

 

Long live the Queen.

 

I looked on another site[Mediamass.com]and her people have confirmed earlier today that once again it's another hoax.

 

Oops.

 

Sorry, but Mediamass is a garbage clickbait site. They have a template that dashes out "(whoever) death hoax" stories whenever someone's rumored to be dying, even if it is actually true.

 

The Queen of Soul continues her reign, thank you very much!

 

Right.

Right. Horrible clickbait site.

 

I hope she tells the media to think (think!) about what they're tryin' to do to her.

 

Fake news should show her a little more R-E-S-P-E-C-T

 

The Daily Mail has picked up Roger's story, for what it's worth...if nothing else, this might prompt either an official confirmation or refutation.
Aretha Franklin 'gravely ill' at 76: Queen of Soul surrounded by family in Detroit | Daily Mail Online

 

Can we please modify the thread title?

 

I'd support that, but that's beyond my pay grade. Perhaps "gravely ill" might be more appropriate than "near death." I did have the foresight to say "reportedly" in the subject title. If this turns out to be false, I'd support zapping the entire thread - and promise to refrain from this sort of thing in the future.

 

"Reportedly" is fine. Zapping threads is Orwellian. Smoke/fire.

 

Now NewsOne is picking it up...NewsOne is part of the Urban One family that also includes Radio One and TV One. Still no second source, though...
Soul Music Legend Aretha Franklin Is Reportedly Near Death

 

And Heavy chimes in, again with no second source...
Report: Aretha Franklin ‘Gravely Ill’ in Detroit Hospital | Heavy.com

 

BET also picked up on the story, but everyone's using the same, original, seemingly sketchy source. The miracle of modern communication is that misinformation can fly around the world at the speed of light.

 

Hope its not true. I thought she sounded and looked pretty darn good in the clips from her performance at the Mann keeping in mind she is pushing 80.

 

Fake news? Ironic that Drudge is the one who spread this around, eh?

 

Hopefully we'll hear from Aretha when she says "Get your butts out of here with that fake news, without your dry white toast, without your four fried chickens, and without Matt Guitar Murphy."

 

Consequence of Sound posted the news adding that “they have reached out to Franklin’s representatives for more information”

 

I'm a journalist, I work at a newspaper that's still profitable and also am intimately involved in our online operation.

This source sounds sketchy to me.

That being said, Aretha is 76 years old, she smoked for years, at one point she was an alcoholic and she's not been in good health for the last few years. Those facts would make my professional antennae go up even at a report from a sketchy source.

My advice? Get worried when TMZ picks it up.

Yes, they're "tabloidy," but their sources for stuff like this are impeccable. (I guarantee they're working this story HARD right now.) It's like the National Enquirer used to be. Back in the day, if the Enquirer said "Brave so-and-so's last days," it was time to buy flowers, because the one thing they had practically a perfect batting average on was celebrity illness/death. (FYI, I don't know what it's like now, but I knew someone who worked for the Enquirer 40 years or so ago and they used to pay an insane amount of money because when you signed on with them you were pissing your conventional journalism career away.)

And "tabloid" doesn't necessarily mean "fake," it means covering story that "real journalists" looked down their noses at as beneath them back in the days when newspapers ruled the roost, but we've figured out now that it's the stuff people want to read.

 

And while this may turn out to be bogus ... I hate to be the voice of doom, but a lot of our musical heroes are not getting any younger and we need to prepare for the times when these stories do turn out to be true.

Time doesn't respect talent and it doesn't respect heroes. Take the sports world for instance ... Willie Mays is 87, Henry Aaron's 84 and in a wheelchair, and Whitey Ford of the Yankees and David Pearson, the great race driver, both have Alzheimer's.

 

Harry Hairston, a “multi emmy winning anchor investigative reporter”, has recently tweeted:
“Spoke with close friend of Aretha Franklin and family. Iconic singer not doing well“
Harry Hairston on Twitter

 

Harry's a Philadelphia reporter with a solid track record.