Editors Note: A former Forbes colleague of mine, Peter Kafka, runs a web site that published yet another example Friday of the perils of turning over “journalism” to the public.
The lesson here is the public has different interests than journalists – they sometimes act in their own selfish interests and publish rumors or things that simply aren’t even true. This is exactly what happened last week when a report was published on a user generated site run by CNN about Apple founder Steve Jobs having a heart attack. The CNN iReport site was bogus.
The argument in favor of citizen journalism has always been that “anyone can practice journalism.” “We are all journalists. The more people doing journalists, the better,” proponents argue. Big Media corporations perpetuate this view because “citizen journalism” content is FREE. Sell ads and rake in the profits.
Bloggers and some naive citizens love the idea of user-generated content. They think citizen journalism is a fantastic development that will further our democracy. It is an easy argument to win.
But there is a dark side to this argument, too, that most fail to acknowledge, namely that not all citizen Journalists (or bloggers) have our best interests at heart. The information they publish is tainted or simply false as evidenced by a bogus report about Steve Jobs having a heart attack. The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating the incident which caused Apple’s stock to take a nose dive. What follows is the Silicon Alley Insider report.
Silicon Alley Insider – “Citizen journalism” apparently just failed its first significant test. A CNN iReport poster reported this morning that Steve Jobs had been rushed to the ER after a severe heart attack. Fortunately, it appears the story was false. We contacted an Apple spokeswoman, who categorically denied it.
CNN’s iReport kept the report up until at least 10:15 AM, about 20 minutes after we published Apple’s denial. The story has since been removed.
UPDATE: Here’s CNN’s official statement. CNN says it removed the story because the community brought the story to its attention. Importantly, CNN also refers to the content as “fraudulent,” which is much stronger than “inaccurate.” The SEC has already launched an investigation.
CNN’s iReport, Original Story
Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath. My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable. I haven’t seen anything about this anywhere else yet, and as of right now, I have no further information, so I thought this would be a good place to start. If anyone else has more information, please share it.
Immediately after reading the iReport story, we contacted Apple. Katie Cotton, Vice President of Worldwide Communications, replied quickly, saying “It is not true.”
Twitter is abuzz. (See the live Twitter feed, which we’ve embedded below). Apple’s stock also took a major hit before bouncing back:
We expect this will lead to an SEC investigation. The IP address of the iReport poster will be easily traceable, and we expect the SEC will want to interview him or her to see if the story was “placed.” (You don’t have to be George Soros to figure out how the stock would react to a story like this.)
It is significant that this report appeared on a site owned by CNN. CNN does not profess to be directly responsible for iReport, but its name is at the top of the site. It’s possible that reports like this will significantly damage CNN’s credibility, and we wouldn’t be surprised if this caused them to pull back from association with “citizen journalism.” As of 10:07 AM ET, ten minutes after we published Apple’s denial, iReport was still “reporting” the story. By 10:20, the story had been removed and replaced with this:
THIS CONTENT IS CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE
Here’s CNN’s vision for iReport:
With this site, we want to share our passion about the news in a way that invites you — and everyone else — to share your passion about the news. At CNN we live for news. We love talking about it. And we know that there’s a whole lot more to it than what you see on TV or read on your favorite Web site. So we’ve launched an independent world where you, the iReport.com community, tell the stories we’re not used to seeing. And the most compelling, important, and urgent ones may get seen on CNN.
So head on over the homepage and jump in. Tell your story and see how it connects to someone on the other side of the world — and build a new kind of news site, one made from communities of shared interests, impassioned discussions and great storytelling. http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/apple-s-steve-jobs-rushed-to-er-after-heart-attack-says-cnn-citizen-journalist
