Stephen Withers
Monday, 06 October 2008 06:17
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
After CNN deleted what it referred to as "the fraudulent content", Apple shares reached an intra-day high of $US106.13 before weakening again in afternoon trading.
The stock ended up at $US97.07, just over 3 percent down from the previous day.
According to reports, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating whether the posting was an attempt to manipulate Apple's share price, and has been provided with information by CNN.
An attempt by CNN to reach the poster at the email address used for registration failed. Frankly, that was likely to have been the case whether the poster was malicious or misinformed.
So what of citizen journalism in general?
The model seems to work well when combined with traditional journalism, providing a source of on-the-spot photos and videos of major events, as was seen with the London bomb attacks in 2005.
The traditional media were lucky that the technology needed to support these activities was in place at a time they needed to slash operating costs, but the way they tricked the public into providing material that is probably worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars for free is another story.
Can you trust reports based on the observations of one effectively anonymous person? Probably not. But then determining the veracity of information found on the Internet has always been an issue, as school students have been taught for a decade or so.
The trouble is that the brand behind the site is one of the key criteria used to infer accuracy and authenticity. So when an organisation such as Time Warner's CNN operates a site, its reputation tends to offset any disclaimers.
On
page three - why sites don't moderate user-generated content.
