28 Comments Add your own

• 1. Amanda E.  |  October 4th, 2008 at 2:33 am

  This has the hallmarks of a 4chan /b/ prank (FYI, 4chan is NOT WORK SAFE).

  They pulled a similar prank with Oprah Winfrey, spread rumors that she was found dead and blogs picked up on it.

• 2. tdc  |  October 4th, 2008 at 8:10 am

  you’d think after the recent reprint of a years old ual press release announcing their bankruptcy filing folks would want to check this stuff out before hitting the submit button.

• 3. tdc  |  October 4th, 2008 at 8:40 am

  This cost a lot of people a lot of money. Someone should go to Jail.

• 4. tdc  |  October 4th, 2008 at 9:06 am

  #3 comment not from “tdc”.

  if you traded this news you deserved to lose.

  as they say- “a fool and his money…”

• 5. Don Day  |  October 4th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

  I plainly hope that the person who posted the report is tracked down and prosecuted. Libel isn’t OK - and while I don’t think CNN is entirely at fault, it is the peril of running that type of site.

  It isn’t OK to spread lies and innuendo about people - and as a culture we’ve got to stop going “it’s the Internet!” and letting people make stuff up.

• 6. Aaron  |  October 4th, 2008 at 6:55 pm

  There’s the rub…isn’t it? What to believe? What not to take seriously? Remember when journalism meant verifying facts? Certainly mistakes were made (later corrected) and bias still exists…but journalism…real, on the street journalism doesn’t play fast and loose with the facts and doesn’t let a trend influence what the public sees. In the zeal for “unfettered” commentary what is ok? What isn’t?
  Lost Remote being sold for under $4000?
  Cory Bergman terminally ill?
  The point is..in a free for all… who makes sense of it and who can we trust? Only each other anonymously? Sounds like a bad idea to me…

• 7. Tom Planchet  |  October 4th, 2008 at 7:01 pm

  Yes, Cory, but if the site would get too many false reports, wouldn’t it be nearly worthless?

  Comments are one thing…IReport tends to put a higher level on that.

  I’m all for free speech and think the site should exist, I’m just thinking that as a source for information…IF…too many people decide to put out misinformation, everything would be judged that way and be almost worthless.

• 8. discreet_chaos  |  October 4th, 2008 at 7:17 pm

  I don’t know that saying someone is dead constitutes libel. If it was posted to effect the stock price, it could be subject to SEC regulations and they’re the ones investigating, but just calling somebody dead doesn’t strike me as very defamatory.

• 9. Safran  |  October 4th, 2008 at 8:19 pm

  Absurd. One idiot posts something plainly stupid, and now everyone in the media will use this as an excuse *not* to do something. As though the “real” media never published something incorrectly before.

  This isn’t close to CJ’s first significant test. If you’re looking for a reason to hate CJ, I can point you to lots of other failures. But one chump out of thousands of reports does not mean an entire project is a failure. On the contrary - that’s a really good batting average.

  I recall that the real journalists at CNN.com accidentally published Dick Cheney’s obit in 2003. I don’t see how that meant the site failed its first “significant test.”

  And when LR sells for $4,000, I expect Cory to buy the beers.

• 10. Aaron  |  October 4th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

  news organizations that depend on getting things right DO post corrections. It happens when they make mistakes…but the issue at question here is whether the comment made that drove down the stock should have been taken seriously….and amazingly it doesn’t matter because it apparently WAS taken seriously. In this very particular case, given Steve Jobs penchant for secrecy, rumors tend to fly more easily anyway….so the blogosphere picks it up and it gains heft and ‘just in case’ selling takes over.
  As legal cases against bloggers wend their way through the courts the day is coming when allowing any kind of post on any kind of topic will be a little more controlled. Not censored per se..but patrolled with a little more vigor, if only to save on legal fees.

  And you’re right…LR would never sell for that much. It doesn’t have any high value ads!!!!

• 11. Tom Planchet  |  October 4th, 2008 at 9:00 pm

  There is a difference between making a mistake and blatantly posting a false story.

  Citizen Journalism is here to stay, the question is whether or not it should go through unfettered. The answer will be yes, but
  I’ve seen many a forum deteriorate to race-based garbage or name calling and turn out to be almost worthless.

  I think IReport could face a similar issue if abuse became prevalent.

  IReport will stay, but if it abuse became prevalent, what would the value be?

• 12. Amanda E.  |  October 5th, 2008 at 12:39 am

  I’ve seen one story on TV here in Spokane where the reporter used a station employee as the “mad as heck member of the public” for his package to stage it a certain way (its on YouTube too) - so I think I will no longer take the news seriously since its just a fad and TV news will eventually fail.

  The same examples being upheld that citizen journalism is nothing more than a failed fad can be applied to TV news too.

  Unfortunately equine posteriors exist on the internet who believe its just all fun and games to post inflammatory or inaccurate information. Outlets are going to have to come to terms with this and find a way to strike a balance between having a free-for-all and hiding away in your newsrooms.

• 13. DB  |  October 5th, 2008 at 2:27 am

  CNN has been desperately trying to attract the YouTube and blog generation. They have the iReport brand to encourage so-called “citizen journalism” and shows like “News to Me” and “Not Just Another Cable News Show” to capitalize the shocking video clips online. Basically, they’re TV shows that show you web videos clips in the same fashion as those pointless “countdown” shows you might find on E! and VH1. It’s quiet pathetic that CNN is trying so hard to make news hip and cool, but I much rather see them trying to report serious news reporting as much as their effort on the i-reporting.
  There need to be a separation on professional and amateur journalism, and CNN is certainly not doing any good with iReport.

• 14. tdc  |  October 5th, 2008 at 7:12 am

  amatuer journalist here (can you tell by the spelling and punctuation?)-

  i used us search to look for “steve jobs” in michigan (as an example), there were 5!

  out of the roughly 250 steve jobs in america, what are the chances that one of them had a heart attack the other day?

  to those who sell “just in case”- learn what the heck a trading halt is.

• 15. Rob  |  October 5th, 2008 at 10:18 am

  CNN iReport … that’s the site where one guy’s posts his latest lunches along with recipes for Eggs in a Basket and Grilled Cheese Samiches, right?

  Most of the stuff on iReport is just user-generated satire.

• 16. Don Day  |  October 5th, 2008 at 10:27 am

  If someone went on the Internet and said I was dead - and I wasn’t - that would be false. Since Steve Jobs’ livelihood depends on being… alive… it’s an attempt to inflict damage - and therefore is libel.

• 17. Danny Sanchez  |  October 5th, 2008 at 11:30 am

  I’m not excusing the media’s massive freakout over this, but I will say there is a huge difference between an iReport and open comments on a blog. By airing iReports during CNN newscasts, CNN is essentially lending a lot of credibility to that iReport brand. So it’s not at all surprising that the public is starting to treat both sites as one and the same — despite the efforts to differentiate them. It’s a result I’ve personally found to be true in my own citizen journalism-related work. When a news organization decides to “scale” CJ efforts, there’s a lot less personal interaction and trust being built, so things like this are much more likely to happen.

• 18. discreet_chaos  |  October 5th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

  Don - Everybody’s livelihood depends on them being alive and libel is a civil matter, so Jobs would have to sue the person who filed the false report. Quite honestly, I sincerely doubt that Jobs will file any kind of case on this incident because first of all, he may not care that much, but I’m also sure that based on the evidence that is currently known, his lawyers would tell him that he’d be unsuccessful.

  While on the other hand, if the fellow posted the info to improve his trading position, then he could be subject to SEC sanctions, but right now, it looks like somebody posted something, a few people used it for trades and because they were clearly trying to get ahead of the curve, their gamble didn’t pay-off.

• 19. Contrarian  |  October 5th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

  Handy way for CNN to both (a) get the benefit, i.e., reads, generated by running unsourced rumors, but also (b) be able to claim they aren’t responsible for those rumors, isn’t it?

  This is what you get when you use unvetted “citizen reports” on your news site.

• 20. tdc  |  October 5th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

  gee, talk about “vetted”… here it is 3 weeks after ike destroyed galveston and the death toll is just now trickling out.

  it seems the gov’t of texas has got this media thing down pat.

  hurricane? what hurricane?

• 21. discreet_chaos  |  October 5th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

  tdc - Speaking of hurricanes and Galveston, I’ve never really done more than visited CNN’s iReport site, but the one that worked its way onto the CNN frontpage about the yellow house which survived the storm was very interesting. (Click my name) As was the iReport about the pre-Ike lines for gasoline because we had no such phenomenon around here, so italerted me to fill my tank, but again, the iReport had to work its way onto the frontpage before I saw it.

• 22. Michael  |  October 5th, 2008 at 7:45 pm

  Here’s what I just don’t get…. What happened to the fact-checking part of journalism?

  Do TV stations air stories based on random e-mails or press releases sent to the news room?

  Do newspapers print stories that are mailed in without checking to see exactly who is sending them in?

  This and the flub at CBS with their iPhone app where someone posted inappropriate material are just examples of poor execution.

  It’s not the Internet’s fault that the editors or whoever is in charge at the iReport site are lazy. If you don’t have some way to moderate what you receive after it’s posted, then you do nothing but provide a soapbox for the thousands of crazy mouth-drooling Internet flamers that exist.

• 23. Brink  |  October 6th, 2008 at 4:55 am

  “Here’s what I just don’t get…. What happened to the fact-checking part of journalism?”

  Haven’t you heard? If it’s on the internet, we don’t need to check facts.

  That’s why we just let “citizen journalists” say whatever they want. Then if it turns out there were wrong, we just say, “Well, those were just citizen journalists.”

  Of couse, until hat time, we promote the heck out of the breaking news supplied by our citizen journalists.

• 24. wtf  |  October 6th, 2008 at 6:18 am

  OMG someone posted something not true on the Internet!!!!!!!!

  Aggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

• 25. Tom Planchet  |  October 6th, 2008 at 7:46 am

  But if you have to take everything with several grains of salt, what value is it?

  Who would go to that page and when they go there, what should they expect? WARNING: The information on here is likely not to be true and of little value…why would anyone go to that site…

• 26. Aaron  |  October 6th, 2008 at 10:24 am

  Blogs and citizen journalism sites work best when “reasonably moderated”… that is when the posts are actually read by the site owners. That takes an enormous amount of time of course but that’s what is required. Over time, these sites tend to self regulate. The Steve Jobs report is unique because of the secrecy around him and recent rumors of his health.
  Still, I can promise you that if there were posts that openly threatened the life of a public official they would be investigated and quite likely tracked down. Similarly, legal cases can and absolutely WILL arise from completely irresponsible speech. We live in a litigious society. Some sites will suffer punitive damages or at the very least be forced to pay heavy legal fees to defend themselves. Good luck on that…

• 27. Brendan  |  October 7th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

  You’re giving CNN an easy cop out. Come on. It’s not like your job is to defend these folks in court. Journalism companies do need to protect their brands and realize that unfiltered or not, that when you provide the public with the forum you’re taking some responsibility for the content they post. These “reports” are unfiltered simply because CNN is taking the cheap way out (and the legally safe way). But journalistically, the high road is to filter one’s citizen-contributed content. In the days of information overload, journalists are only of a service to an extent that they help their audience filter through some of the noise. Journalists shouldn’t be adding to the noise, especially with content that is of such dubious value, beyond providing CNN with some occasionally good *free* footage, which they could still have even if they filtered the contributions before they’re posted to their site.

• 28. Anonymous  |  October 12th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

  TDC: #3 was your personality, Edward. He is really you and you are not really him. Got that?

  PS I have read some garbage in the gossip dept. like one outfit that seemed to want to tell folks Miley Cyrus had been fired and they were looking for a new Hannah…

  If you could get search engines to drop links to long settled controversy (whether of not R Kelly did or didn’t) and discredited crackpots that seem to still be driving well-meaning trolls everywhere, perhaps the bapacity of the Internet would be freed by a factor of 50%

  (Ruthlessly ending porn tag spamming might take traffic back to 1998 level alone, I think)

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