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Not the finest day

A false report on CNN’s iReport that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had been rushed to the hospital after a heart attack was taken down yesterday, but the damage was done. Apple’s stock dropped sharply on the “news” and now the SEC could potentially get involved to figure out if there was market manipulation here.

This is a good example of why you need editor gatekeepers in the process. They need to have a light touch, but on news this big you need verification. And it should have been easily verifiable. We preach that here at Missouri, and others in the industry do this as well.

What this should not be is “evidence” that citizen journalism doesn’t work. HIstory tells us that the early days of professional journalism encountered similar problems with inaccuracy or outright fraud. Any new enterprise requires some trial and error here, and it would be inaccurate to say that participatory media has no future because of the exploits of one fool.