TechWag

Image via CrunchBaseThe news that Steve jobs had a heart attack this morning and was rushed to the hospital is not a true story, but made it around twitter and the world in about 5 minutes. This is as Read Write Web points out is an abject failure of citizen journalism.

The story is currently pulled down from CNN’s IReport site and is no longer available. The interesting part is how much this also tapped Apple’s stock this morning. This is a screen cap of the stock tanking then rebounding as the news was shown to be false.

Of course this leads to paranoia trading conspiracies, then again that is part of the issue, when a false news report can tank a stock, much like we saw with the airline industry last month where UAL was nearly knocked off wall street when an old bankruptcy note ended up getting new play for four year old news, it does make knowing what is happening more difficult. If it had been true though, just about everyone and their brother would have wanted to know about this one. It would have been important if true.

Silicon Alley Insider is expecting an SEC investigation on this one just to make sure it was not a stock manipulation. Expect everyone who bought or sold shares, shorted, or otherwise stood to gain from this to be quietly talked to. The person who reported the story should also find themselves in a very uncomfortable position.

Tags: apple, steve jobs, heart attack, not true, reporting, stock manipulation maybe

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