Stupid Reporter Tricks: Misreporting the Death of Luther Vandross

By Nicholas Stix Friday on the 11 p.m. Eyewitness News at ABC’s New York affiliate, reporter Jeff Peguys covered the death of Luther Vandross. Peguys noted Vandross’ April, 2003 stroke, but immediately followed that with the non sequitur, “but his career and the music” continued (I’m not sure if Peguys said “continued” or “went on.”). I wasn’t aware that Vandross’ career had somehow continued. After all, if he never overcame his 2003 stroke, never again publicly performed, the album, Dance with My Father, that came out weeks (June 10, 2003) after the stroke was his last, and no secretly made post-stroke recordings have surfaced, how could his career have continued? (Vandross had barely emerged from a coma when the album was released.) I googled through some of the obit stories. The AP story by Nekesa Mumbi Moody, and which came out over one hour before Peguys’ report, had a familiar sound. “Since the stroke in his Manhattan home on April 16, 2003, the R&B crooner stopped making public appearances -- but amazingly managed to continue his recording career. In 2004, he captured four Grammys as a sentimental favorite, including best song for the bittersweet 'Dance With My Father.'" Those Grammys were for the Dance with My Father album. Further down, Moody reports, “In 2005, he was nominated for a Soul Train Music Award for a duet with Beyoncé on 'The Closer I Get To You.'" Perhaps Moody saw that entry, and assumed that Vandross had indeed recorded music after the stroke. But the duet was also from Dance with My Father. (It was also on a Beyonce Knowles CD that was released on June 24, 2003.) Unless I missed the boat, Nekesa Mumbi Moody was guilty of the hoary reporter’s cliché of trying to give a happy ending to a story that doesn’t have one, while Peguys was engaging in the practice, as old as journalism itself, of cribbing from a fellow journalist. Unless and until new facts come to light showing that Vandross was able to work after his stroke, that stroke ended Luther Vandross’ career. That is a heartbreaking fact, but one that cannot and should not be falsified. Meanwhile, a number of obits insinuated that Vandross was a homosexual, referring to him, as Reuters’ Dean Goodman did, as a “lifelong bachelor.” Such euphemisms have an honorable pedigree, but that was before the age of outing and of “queering the news,” the deliberate spreading of false reports claiming that celebrities are homosexual. The false reports are put into play by gay activists posing (and being paid) as journalists, who believe that it is good for gays’ public acceptance to depict as many celebrities as possible as homosexual, the truth be damned. That strategy is an outgrowth of two much older gay strategies: 1. Outing celebrities who actually are gay, and 2. Wildly inflating the proportion of homosexuals in the population at large. I googled, and found that rumors of Vandross being homosexual had circulated for years. But at this point, they remain rumors. Unless Goodman had unimpeachable sources, he should have waited with the “bachelor” line. Luther Vandross was, in this man’s opinion, the greatest singer of his generation. He not only had a great set of pipes, but unlike even those few popular singers today blessed with similar natural gifts, he knew what to do with them, and he had impeccable taste. And he paid his dues. And by all accounts, he was a truly nice guy, which is another rarity at the top of his spoiled profession. And only 54! Imagine all the wonderful music he might yet have produced. The death of Luther Vandross is a heartbreaking story all on its own. It doesn’t need phony, upbeat spin or dubious homosexual insinuations to generate interest.