Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget writes about an iReport earlier today on CNN.com that reported Apple CEO Steve Jobs had been hospitalized after 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," writes the user, JohnTW.
It turned out not to be true, and by 10:20amET the iReport had been removed. But Apple's stock dropped significantly after the report first circulated, and Blodget writes "we expect this will lead to an SEC investigation."
CNN gave us this statement regarding the matter:
iReport.com is an entirely user-generated site where the content is determined by the community. Content that does not comply with Community Guidelines will be removed. After the content in question was uploaded to iReport.com, the community brought it to our attention. Based on our Terms of Use that govern user behavior on iReport.com, the fraudulent content was removed from the site and the user's account was disabled.
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/Apple Denies Steve Jobs Heart Attack Report: "It Is Not True"
Apple Denies Steve Jobs Heart Attack Report: "It Is Not True"
Henry Blodget | October 3, 2008 9:18 AM
"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 (story and screenshot below). 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:
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/apple-s-steve-jobs-rushed-to-er-after-heart-attack-says-cnn-citizen-journalist
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