Can you write an obituary about someone before he’s dead?

Such is the question raised by the New York Times’ recent piece on Steve Fossett’s disappearance (New York Times, October 15th). One the one hand, 5 weeks after the millionaire explorer vanished during a flight across the Nevada desert it seems safe to assume – as has done his close friend Richard Branson – that Fossett is no longer with us. On the other hand, history is full of examples of the embarrassment that comes from pre-emptive memoriams. Newspapers the world over rushed to report Chemical Ali’s death in April 2003 – and then had to wait another four years for their words to ring true.

On October 3, the government declared the search for Fossett officially over – but still the papers hesitate. The closest any publication has come to officially acknowledging his death is Time Magazine, who a few weeks ago published a homage to him, written by Branson. Their predicament is an unusual one: as Andrew McKie of the British Independent newspaper points out, “without any independent verification, it seems very peculiar to print one. Do you say, yesterday we thought there was a chance he was still alive but today we’ve decided there isn’t one so we’ll run it?”