71-year-old man killed by 12-foot alligator while fishing in Florida

🗞️ Story file #590

71-year-old man killed by 12-foot alligator while fishing in Florida

Oct 17, 1 PM ET to Oct 21, 12 AM ET

12outlets carried it
🫏6 · 2 · 4🐘left · center · right
3.5 dayson the front pages
11front pages at once, at its peak
3 minof TV captions

👣 How this story traveled: from the front pages that broke it, out through TV, radio and the shows, into what people retold and what fact-checkers examined, and on into the saga it is part of. Everything here is matched to the story by our tools, so a link can be wrong; the trackers' pages say how each is made.

Oct 17, 1 PM ETfirst on a front page: BBC
Oct 17, 3 PM ETfirst on TV: CNN
Oct 18, 11 PM ETpeak: on 11 front pages

the front pages that ran it, hour by hour

Front pages carrying it at each hourly run, Oct 17, 1 PM to Oct 21, 12 AM ET (peak 11), by the outlets' lean: left · center · right

Who carried it and when: each outlet in the order it picked the story up, a bar for each headline from when we first saw it on the front page to when we last did, in the outlet's lean color (dashed: not rated); a dot marks a new headline. Beneath, its captions on TV, the radio newscasts that carried it (bigger: the lead) and when people were found retelling it. Hover for details.

📡 wire copy: 1 outlet ran the AP headline nearly word for word (HuffPost)

📌 linked by aggregators: Drudge Report Google News

🗣️ only one side says: 🫏 alligator alongside florida

✏️ 7 outlets ran more than one headline on it (reworded, or a follow-up)

AP (3 wordings): “Fisherman, 71, attacked and killed by 12-foot alligator alongside Florida lake” → “Fisherman, 71, killed by 12-foot alligator alongside Florida lake”
Breitbart (2 wordings): “Monstrous Alligator Fatally Attacks Senior Fishing Along Lake Shoreline in Central Florida” → “Monstrous Alligator Fatally Attacks Senior Fishing Along Lake Shoreline in FL”
NBC News (2 wordings): “71-year-old man dies after alligator attack while fishing in Florida, police say” → “Man, 71, dies after alligator attack while fishing in Florida, police say”
New York Post (5 wordings): “Fisherman, 71, killed by 12-foot alligator while he stood on Florida shoreline” → “An elderly Florida fisherman trying to flee a massive 12-foot alligator slipped and fell moments before the beast clamped onto his leg and dragged him into the water, a witness to the fatal attack revealed.”
Tampa Bay Times (2 wordings): “Florida man, 71, killed by 12-foot alligator while fishing at park, police say • News comment” → “Florida man, 71, killed by 12-foot alligator while fishing at park, police say”
The Daily Beast (2 wordings): “Giant Alligator Pulls Man to His Death” → “Disturbing Details Emerge in Fisherman’s Fatal Alligator Attack”
The Sun (2 wordings): “HORROR ATTACK Man killed by 12ft alligator as rescuers saw him dragged into infested waters THE 71-year-old was fishing in the Winter Garden Park in Florida when he was savaged by the huge beast.” → “FINAL PHOTO Fisherman, 71, posed for pic before 12ft alligator dragged him into lake A FISHERMAN has been killed in an alligator attack as witnesses say he was dragged into the lake and never resurfaced.”

Every outlet's first headline (12), left to right by AllSides rating