Questions over citizen journalism are raised, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigates the ‘unsubstantiated report’ that Apple CEO Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack, posted by “Johntw” on CNN’s iReport site on Friday morning – the story sent shares falling until Apple denied the rumours.
The death of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs was prematurely announced yesterday afternoon by Bloomberg.
A pre-prepared stock obituary was accidentally posted to Bloomberg’s corporate client wire service, even through the story was marked ‘Hold for release – Do not use’.
It was quickly spotted by a user, and sent to Gawker.com, where the obituary can still be read in full.
Bloomberg was quick to retract the story, and yesterday published a message on its wire saying: “An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m.New York time today.”
At Telegraph.co.uk Matthew Moore reports: “The stock obituary was published ‘momentarily’ after a routine update by a reporter, and was ‘immediately deleted’, Bloomberg said.”
According to Moore, ‘Jobs has been reluctant to publicly discuss his health, but recently denied claims that his cancer [from which he has previously suffered] had returned’.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has released a detailed report about how he sees Apple quadrupling its 2008 sales and hitting the 45m figure he had previously predicted.
These are the key elements:
– Introducing a 3G iPhone within the next 3 to 6 months
– Offering a family of 2 to 3 iPhones – including lower-priced models selling for $200 to $300 – by Jan 2009 at the latest
– Entering new countries, effectively doubling the addressable market every year for the next two years
– Adding new features, such as games and remote purchases starting in June.