Steve Jobs is alive and well; citizen journalism, not so much

First, the good news: As far as I can determine, Steve Jobs did not have a heart attack this morning, and was not rushed to the emergency room.

But you might think otherwise if you dialed up iReport, a citizen-journalism site whose tag line is “Unedited. Unfiltered. News.” Perhaps a better slogan might be “Unedited. Unfiltered. B******t.”

That “report” hit the Internet less than an hour ago, as I type this. It’s already been denied by Apple and pulled by the site.

Here’s what the report said, per Henry Blodget at Silicon Valley Insider:

Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath. My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable. I haven’t seen anything about this anywhere else yet, and as of right now, I have no further information, so I thought this would be a good place to start. If anyone else has more information, please share it.

Here’s the part I love: “My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable.” No doubt the same guy who saw those WMDs in Iraq.

The story was only up for around an hour, but that was long enough to get the Twitterati buzzing (which is where I first saw it).

Because iReport is affiliated with CNN, it carries more weight than your usual “let’s just make stuff up” blogger. So within minutes, Apple’s share price took yet another hit — dropping about 7 points in the space of five minutes before rebounding slightly. Which begs the obvious question: Was this a set up? Is somebody trying to use sites like this to manipulate share prices to make a quick buck? Or is this just the usual adolescent prank?

Somewhere, some overgrown 14-year-old is sniggering.

A bigger question: In an age where news travels nearly at the speed of light, and anybody with a keyboard becomes a “reporter,” whom are we to believe? Can just anyone be considered credible? Have we reached an era where everything is spin and rumor, and the most scandalous report wins?

Lots of questions, no good answers. What do you think? Post your thoughts below or email me direct: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com.

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