EXTRA: Steve Jobs not dead; blogger's rep. mortally wounded
- TAGS:AAPL, CNN.iReport, heart attack, Johntw, SEC
- IT TOPICS:Government & Regulation, Internet, Windows
Welcome to a special IT Blogwatch EXTRA: Richi Jennings watches bloggers watch the SEC watch out for bogus "news" about Steve Jobs' health. Not to mention misinterpreting "bad" punctuation...
Martyn Williams feels the pulse:
The fake Internet report posted to CNN's iReport site earlier this month claiming Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack was posted by a teenager who doesn't appear to have posted it to manipulate the company's stock price.
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is still looking into the motives of the unnamed 18-year old but that it hasn't found any trading records that show the person in question benefitted from the more than 5 percent drop suffered by Apple's stock on Oct. 3.
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CNN's iReport, which boasts "Unedited. Unfiltered. News," came in for criticism after the incident. It also served to highlight the risks of relying on posts from bloggers, the exact identity of whom is often unknown along with their motives for posting information. Then later the spotlight was turned back to the media and in particular Silicon Valley Insider for picking up the original report and publicizing it before it had confirmed the details from Apple.
Henry Blodget offers this sober reaction:
As expected, the Feds have nailed the "citizen journalist" who posted the fake Steve Jobs heart attack report.
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Unless the SEC finds evidence of stock manipulation, the case is probably out of its jurisdiction. Another prosecutor could always argue it broke some other law, though.
But Chris Williams clearly thinks Blodget should be more contrite:
The false iReport story would probably have sank without a trace, like most user-generated content, had it not been dredged up and republished unchecked by ... disgraced former Oppenheimer and Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget.
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It caused a sudden 5.4 per cent drop in Apple's share price ... The real mystery ... is why stockbrokers believed what they read on the blog of a man the SEC banned from Wall Street for life after the dotcom crash for, erm, circulating false information about tech companies.
Daniel Eran Dilger 'splains:
Henry Blodget, [was] a former Merrill Lynch analyst who was charged with civil securities fraud by the SEC in 2003 ... He “settled the charge without admitting or denying the allegations, agreed to pay a fine and ‘disgorgement’ totaling $4 million, and agreed to a permanent prohibition against working in the securities industry.”
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Blodget defended his publishing of the rumor without any credible substantiation or fact checking in a piece that claimed “online journalism occupies a new and unique niche in the media continuum.”
Michael Murphy weeps:
This is one of those situations that really make bloggers and all “citizen-journalists” look bad. I realize this kid wasn’t a blogger - but whenever a story like this makes the rounds it shines a bad light on anyone that isn’t from a mainstream media outlet (although one could argue it was the connection to mainstream media outlet CNN that truly caused the problem).
Aviv Hadar agrees:
Whether or not the teenager had plans on making money with the fake posting or not, CNN’s iReport website and its credibility have been seriously questioned. Although CNN claims that it has rules in place for preventing users from making up stories about the health of celebrities, disabling this teenager’s user account and removing the false information is not enough.A new set of guidelines, and perhaps the addition of human moderation would help prevent this from ever happening again.
This... is Rob Beschizza:
Among the top stories this morning at iReport: Obama Is Too Soft For America and I Hope McCain Didn't Make One Of His Supporter Do This.
And finally...
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
Previously in IT Blogwatch:
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