Those publications are good for after-the-fact in-depth analyses, but they're not really equipped to produce/verify breaking news. It's very unlikely they would hear about something like this before AP, Reuters, etc.
As far as I can tell, neither article has basic facts about his death, either, such as where he died or how.
Typically media orgs have obituaries made for everyone likely to pass (sick, or old age). It would make sense that all media orgs got one handy for Noam as his is rather old.
It was the 90s. I was probably in the ninth grade in a small, sleepy little town in the southernmost part of India called Quilon when Noam Chomsky and his wife showed up on a stage and talked about how life has to change culturally to be a developed nation and how linguistic skills should be at the forefront to succeed.
I was probably just 12 years old, but it profoundly impacted this little kid and was etched for the rest of my life.
Rest in peace, Mr. Chomsky. You've impacted more people than you can ever imagine.
Back 20 years ago in college I emailed Chomsky with a number of questions about the global issues of the day. I received a detailed, point-by-point response from him that very evening.
For a public intellectual he was really approachable, RIP.
Wikipedia doesn't show him as deceased as of this writing, so I'm inclined to believe that. Multiple news sources report him recovering from a stroke in Brazil, though.
Discussion on his Wikipedia article's talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Noam_Chomsky#Is_he_dead%3...
edit: fixed broken URL encoding