The Industry Standard - Who is responsible for the false Steve Jobs heart attack report? - Comments

Hey was' happenin' here?!

johntw — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:29:35 -0700

Hey was' happenin' here?!

I can promise you 100%, that

David Davidson — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:13:56 -0700

I can promise you 100%, that it was 4chan.
I was there when it started.

I had nothing to do with the ireport though, I just stuck with digg.

yo dawgs, dave is right, it

ebaumsouljah — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:06:47 -0700

yo dawgs, dave is right, it was all of us at ebaums, got ya good !

obviously it was

David Hansen — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:31:25 -0700

obviously it was ebaumsworld.
they are the only ones who would do it for just the thrill

For the lulz, obviously.

Anonymous — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:25:15 -0700

For the lulz, obviously.

Word on the grapevine is it

Richard Mongler — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 07:30:17 -0700

Word on the grapevine is it was ebaumsworld

1st Tweets ~ Steve Jobs

tweetip — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:31:36 -0700

1st Tweets ~ Steve Jobs Heart Attack ~ Timeline/Chart... http://tweetip.us/lkq3e

Totally crazy if someone

Eric Hill812251 — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:55:19 -0700

Totally crazy if someone started the rumor just to try and scoop up some cheaper stock. I can't imagine why else anyone would do it (unless johntw is simply a malicious jerk). Amazing how much power an anonymous "citizen journalist" with an anonymous source can have in today's world.

4chan undoubtedly gets more

Louis Gray — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:33:51 -0700

4chan undoubtedly gets more credit for things they don't do than those they actually do. It's like a terrorist org where they all want to claim responsibility, whether they did it or not, but others are making the claims for them.

Who is responsible for the false Steve Jobs heart attack report?

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:24:31 -0700

As the dust continues to settle today after the false report published on CNN's iReport that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a massive heart attack, investigation into the source of the story continues. iReport pulled the story almost immediately after the story broke across other media outlets, but the mystery remains: Who is "johntw" who originally submitted the story?

A quick check of the user profile shows no other stories submitted to iReport from that user. However, it's possible that iReport could have deleted all stories submitted after such a high-profile false story. A Google site search, however, seems to indicate that the user profile made its first appearance today, possibly set up for the sole purpose of posting the Jobs story.

There has been a bit of speculation on Twitter that the rumor was a prank originating with 4chan users. No confirmation could be found on the 4chan boards, however, the rumor does seem to follow a similar pattern to that of a similar rumor last month that claimed Oprah Winfrey had died. Following the iReport story, Jobs' Wikpedia listing was altered to claim he had recently died, even though the iReport story only claimed he's had a heart attack, not that he'd passed away.

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