CNN aired a photo of a Las Vegas Dolly Parton tribute artist instead of the real singer during coverage of her death, then apologized to Parton's family for the mix-up. The erroneous image appeared during Laura Coates Live roughly 12 hours after Parton's family publicly announced her passing on Tuesday, August 25, 2026.
The photo showed 58-year-old tribute performer Kelly Vohnn, not Parton herself, according to The Washington Times. Laura Coates Live broadcasts weeknights live from Washington, D.C. at 11 p.m. Eastern, and it was during that broadcast window that producers pulled the wrong image for the tribute segment. CNN later issued a statement taking responsibility, saying, “We regret the error and apologize to the Parton family.”
The New York Post reports the photo actually came from a red carpet at a December 2025 Las Vegas screening of Song Sung Blue, a Focus Features biographical drama starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson about a married couple who form a Neil Diamond tribute band. Vohnn had appeared at that screening in full tribute attire, which likely fed the confusion when someone pulled images for CNN's broadcast graphic.
Who Is Kelly Vohnn
Vohnn is a professional Dolly Parton tribute artist who has never presented herself as the real singer. Born and raised in Toronto, she later moved her family to Las Vegas and built a career portraying Parton and other female music icons, developing a one-woman show called Kelly Vohnn Divas and performing in productions including Cowboy Cabaret and Cowboy Christmas.
Her résumé includes starring in DOLLY: The Living Legend at Notoriety Live in Las Vegas in May 2026, according to EAT MORE ART! Vegas, and she is set to headline a September 2026 concert at Blue Note Hawaii benefiting Parton's Dollywood Foundation. Earlier in her career she worked as a card dealer performing celebrity lookalike routines in the Imperial Palace's Dealertainers program, a specialized gaming pit that launched in May 2003 on the Las Vegas Strip before the property was later rebranded as The LINQ.
A Performer Grieving Her Inspiration
Vohnn told the Washington Times she found out about the broadcast mix-up when friends began texting her after spotting her image on CNN. She said she felt network producers had failed to do proper research, but grief over Parton's death left her too distraught to reach out to CNN immediately.
Per the same account, Vohnn said Parton had a singular impact on her life and career and had helped her through the lowest and highest moments of her life. She vowed to continue celebrating Parton's music, describing the singer as an inspiration to her as both a woman and an entertainer.
Parton's Death and Vegas Ties
Dolly Parton died at age 80 on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville following what her team described as a brief battle with cancer, according to Consequence. The illness had previously led her to cancel a planned Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace. Her family announced her death publicly that same day.
Not the First Newsroom Graphic Blunder
Broadcast graphic errors during breaking celebrity news are not unprecedented. Fox News accidentally aired a tribute graphic showing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's photo alongside the dates 1933-2019 during Fox & Friends in January 2019 while she was still recovering from surgery, an error Business Insider reported the network's hosts apologized for later in the same broadcast.
CNN itself has a history with tribute-material mishaps. In April 2003, technical flaws on an internal staging server briefly made pre-written draft obituaries for living public figures, including Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney and Fidel Castro, publicly accessible, as CBS News reported at the time. News organizations routinely assemble tribute graphics and text in advance of expected deaths, a practice that speeds coverage but can also multiply the chances for error.
The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics states that news organizations must verify information before releasing it and take responsibility for the accuracy of their work, holding that neither speed nor broadcast format excuses inaccuracies. CNN's mistake, coming amid a wave of tributes to Parton across the country, is a reminder of how easily a control room racing to keep pace with breaking news can mix up the tribute act for the icon herself.
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