Via Fobes.com -
BURLINGAME, CALIF. - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating a post made to CNN's iReport Web site after a "citizen blogger" claimed Friday that Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack, CNN has confirmed.
Memo to citizen journalists. Steve Jobs cannot die. His fingers shoot laser beams. He gobbles (organic) lithium-ion batteries. Where the rest of us have a heart, Jobs has a miniaturized rack of Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) XServe computers, each powered by a pair of quad-core Intel Xeon microprocessors and Apple's OS X operating system.
At least, that's as credible a tale as the one peddled by the citizen blogger on Friday.
The report sent Apple shares down to $94.65 a share from $105.04 in early Friday trading. That means $9 billion of market value evaporated in less time than it took for Dorothy to liquidate the Wicked Witch of the West with a bucket of cold water. Apple's stock snapped back as soon as an Apple spokesman emphatically denied the report.
In a statement, CNN said the "fraudulent content" was removed from its iReport citizen journalism site and the user's account was disabled. CNN is also cooperating with the SEC on the matter, said CNN spokesperson Jennifer Martin. The posting on iReport "not vetted or reported by CNN journalists" and was yanked at 10 a.m. Eastern time after it was brought to the editor's attention by iReport's user community.
The flap does shed some light on the value of Steve Jobs and the sometimes chaotic effect of citizen journalism.
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A case of a very lame (and unintentionally) Black PR attack?
This one was easy to recover from, but can you think of another report that might be more difficult to debunk?
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