Six Flags adds seat belts to roller coasters after rider's death

🗞️ Story file #921

Six Flags adds seat belts to roller coasters after rider's death

Oct 24, 2 PM ET to Oct 27, 10 AM ET

15outlets carried it
🫏8 · 3 · 4🐘left · center · right
2.8 dayson the front pages
14front pages at once, at its peak
23 sof TV captions
7radio newscasts
6people retold it online

👣 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 24, 2 PM ETfirst on a front page: AP
Oct 24, 5 PM ETfirst on the radio: NPR News Now
Oct 25, 4 AM ETretold online by 6 people
Oct 25, 4 PM ETpeak: on 14 front pages
Oct 27, 6 AM ETfirst on TV: Fox News

the front pages that ran it, hour by hour

Front pages carrying it at each hourly run, Oct 24, 2 PM to Oct 27, 10 AM ET (peak 14), 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 (Scripps News)

📌 linked by aggregators: Google News

💬 quoted: “Goliath”

🗣️ only one side says: 🫏 rider death

✏️ 5 outlets ran more than one headline on it (reworded, or a follow-up)

AP (2 wordings): “Six Flags says it will install seat belts on Georgia roller coaster after rider’s death” → “Six Flags says it will install seat belts on Georgia roller coaster after rider’s death - AP News”
BBC (2 wordings): “Six Flags adding seat belts to Goliath rollercoaster following death” → “Six Flags adding seatbelts to Goliath rollercoaster following death”
Fox News (2 wordings): “Six Flags to add seat belts to roller coasters after Georgia rider’s death” → “Six Flags announces major safety change after man ejected from roller coaster”
NBC News (2 wordings): “Six Flags to add seat belts to roller coaster after Georgia man falls to his death” → “Six Flags to add seat belts to three roller coasters after Georgia man falls to his death”
The Washington Post (2 wordings): “Six Flags to add seat belts to some roller coasters after death in Georgia” → “Six Flags to add seat belts to some roller coasters after death in Georgia - The Washington Post”

Every outlet's first headline (15), left to right by AllSides rating