The Death of Tom Petty

The Death of Tom Petty

Angel Reyes

In today’s day in age it is very important for the media to be the first to report about something. One of the biggest resources that companies use is social media, the reason being because it is fast and society uses it 24/7. The problem with being the first to say something is that you may not always be 100% correct. In October of 2017, Tom Petty was found non-responsive in his home in California. Once word got out it was off to the races, media companies quickly posted that Tom Petty had died that day in his home, but Tom Petty was not confirmed dead, he was just unresponsive. There was a lot of misconception on who was right about Tom Petty, the world wanted to know the truth. Later that day word finally got out that Tom Petty was confirmed dead, but why were people saying he was dead hours before he had actually died? Media companies want to be first, they want to be the company that gives you what you want to hear the moment it happens. Are companies, always right? No, they simply want to inform you on something that was said, like the grapevine affect. When something is said it can be manipulated from person to person, leaving the end product completely different from what it was at the beginning. This leads us to quality content, what makes us want to listen to something. For starters, it needs to be presented in a way that makes us want to listen. Because these giant media companies say it, and because we have followed them for years we want to believe what they say. It doesn’t matter what platform they post on as long as their logo is heading the title people will listen. In doing my research I read an article by the Rolling Stone that was very informative. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-pettys-cause-of-death-accidental-overdose-w515472, the article that the Rolling Stone posted went into great detail as to how and why Tom had and used so many drugs. The only bad thing I saw about it was that it was posted in January of 2018, months after Tom Petty had died. This makes you think about how media companies care more about quantity than quality, the more stories they get to first the better, instead of getting more accurate stories with a slightly delayed timeframe. I am not a fan of Tom Petty, so I didn’t give this dilemma much attention. After listening to some of his songs it’s clear that his fan base was large, hopefully the world of media learned a lesson on posting about deaths on social media. Here is a link so you can enjoy some of his music, https://open.spotify.com/artist/2UZMlIwnkgAEDBsw1Rejkn.