Borgerjournalist sender Apple-aktie ud i fald

Hos TechCrunch læser jeg, hvordan en tilsyneladende falsk historie på CNN’s borgermedie iReport om, at Apple-bossen Steve Jobs skulle have fået et hjerteanfald ramte Apple-aktien.

Apple’s stock took a temporary 10-point hit this morning after a false report surfaced on CNN’s iReport that Steve Jobs had a heart attack. The report has been removed, but only after Silicon Alley Insider and others confirmed with Apple that Jobs did not have a heart attack. And the stock jumped right back up to its opening levels.

Der hersker vist ingen tvivl om, at dette er et slag for borgerjournalistikken, og jeg tror Erick Schonfeld fra TechCrunch har en god pointe:

But as this incident shows even the an unvetted report carries more weight than if it had appeared on Twitter or a random blog because it is on a CNN site. And that may be purely because it gets distributed more broadly. It could also be because people tend to believe what they read on CNN-branded sites.

Det beviser i hvert fald, at det er vanvittigt vigtigt at holde øje med, hvad brugerne på ens site skriver.

Rory Cellan-Jones fra BBC har også blogget om det, og har fået en kommentar fra CNN:

“iReport.com is an entirely user-generated site where the content is determined by the community. Content that does not comply with Community Guidelines will be removed. After the content in question was uploaded to iReport.com, the community brought it to our attention. Based on our Terms of Use that govern user behaviour on iReport.com, the fraudulent content was removed from the site and the user’s account was disabled.”

Og Cellan-Jones stiller spørgsmålet:

The border between professional and amateur journalism is getting more blurred. But if a professional news organisation publishes an inaccurate piece by an amateur journalist, whose reputation suffers?

Spørgsmålet er nu, om CNN vil begynde at forhåndsgodkende alle historier, inden de bliver publiceret, eller om der kommer til at ske noget andet med iReport.