Kaizenlog

—————————————+
| Jobs Rumor Debacle Besmirches Citizen Journalism                   |
|   from the unverified-is-not-the-same-as-unfiltered dept.          |
|   posted by kdawson on Sunday October 05, @19:35 (The Media)       |
|   http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/05/212249 |
+——————————————————————–+

On Friday someone posted a [0]false rumor that Steve Jobs had suffered a
heart attack on CNN’s unverified citizen journalism site, iReport.
Apple’s stock price went vertical, losing 9% before Apple stepped in and
denied the rumor; the stock then recovered most of its loss. The [1]SEC
is investigating. PCWorld looks at the [2]hit taken by citizen journalism
as a result of this incident. “[The] increasingly blurred line between
journalism and rumor is a serious concern for Al Tompkins, the
broadcast/online group leader at The Poynter Institute — a specialized
school for journalists of all media forms. ‘How could you possibly allow
just anybody to post just anything under your [CNN] label unless you have
blazing billboards that say, “None of this has been verified, we’ve not
looked at any of this, we have no idea if this is true?”‘ he asks.”

Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/10/05/212249

Links:
0. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/10/03/jobs-ireport.html
1. http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2689
2. http://www.pcworld.com/article/151871/bogus_jobs_heart_attack_report_rattles_citizen_journalism.html