10. False Report on Steve Jobs Heart Attack: 2008 in Review

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In October, a false posting on CNN's participatory journalism site iReport claiming that Apple chief Steve Jobs “was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack” caused considerable ripples both in the media and in the financial industry.

The report, by first-time poster johntw, was quickly pulled by iReport staff, but not before it had found its way into the (micro)blogosphere and beyond. Apple quickly denied the rumor, but the company's shares took a dive and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation.

Some commentators claimed that the incident had damaged CNN’s credibility, and that it represented a failure of citizen journalism. But it was not citizen journalism that had failed; what the incident demonstrated was that people were willing to act on and rebroadcast an unverified report without first checking the facts.

Subsequently CNN posted a disclaimer at the top of its home page stressing that “stories submitted by users are not edited, fact-checked or screened before they post.”