The Latest Invasion Into Steve Jobs’ Privacy: A Untrue “Heart Attack”

The bizarre and apparently endless obsession with the health of Steve Jobs has taken yet another offensive turn. This time, in the form of an unsubstantiated “citizen report” placed on a CNN site called iReport, which stated that Steve Jobs had been rushed to a hospital following a “major heart attack”.

CNN spokesperson, Jennifer Martin, maintains that the content published on this site is “entirely user-generated”, and that CNN site “makes no guarantee about the content or coverage” of the headlines that are published there. Sorry? Excuse me? How is that news? How is that responsible journalism? How is that, in any way, legal? Of course, in the age of the internet, and especially in the blogsphere, all sorts of nonsense can be written and published. But when it is given the “imprimatur” of a news source such as CNN how is it possible that extended responsibility does not exist?

Martin claims that once the “community” brought it to CNN’s attention, the fraudulent content was removed from the site and the account of the user who had posted it was “disabled”. Is anyone else out there wondering whether charges should be brought against this “user”? Or, how about this — CNN should rethink iReport altogether and consider shutting it down?

The content may have been removed, but certainly not before the rumour spread like wildfire, and Apple’s stock fell 10 points in response. Yes, it regained the points after the company denied the report. But isn’t there a bigger issue here?

The SEC announced Friday that it is investigating this situation, to discover whether or not the announcement was made as an attempt to manipulate Apple’s stock prices. It’s a valid question, and overdue. As Steve Jobs himself intimated in an interview last month with CNBC’s Jim Goldman, these rumours may be spawned by “hedge funds with a big short position in Apple”.

The reality is that, despite horrible economic conditions, Apple’s products have continued to set sales records. With the summer’s unprecedented sales of the iPhone 3G, and with ever-increasing growth of Mac sales, Analysts expect that Apple could hit a record-breaking $30 billion in sales this year. Apple is also making enormous inroads into the Enterprise, showing more and more Macs in business, more iPhone use over the Blackberry. With every quarter’s report showing greater growth than the quarter before, why is the stock taking such a hit? Who benefits, one might ask, from knocking the company’s stock price down through fear and false reporting? It’s clear that the market is failing to reflect Apple’s success, and that the company’s performance and fundamentals should be mirrored by a much healthier stock price. The SEC should have started paying attention a long time ago.

The company is constantly being put in a position to deny health rumours, thereby making a story where there is none. This false report about a heart attack which didn’t happen is just the latest in a long line of offensive reporting, including August 28’s report on the Bloomberg news service, which published an obituary of Steve Jobs.

Can we cut it out now? Seriously? Mr. Jobs is one of the visionaries of our age. Our fascination with him is understandable. But the man deserves to be treated with respect. Can we just agree to wish Mr. Jobs great health, long life and a continued astonishing success as the CEO of one of the strongest companies in the world? Let’s look forward to on-going amazement in the form of new lines of products, updated Macs, great creative software. There’s plenty of real news to report where Apple is concerned. Let’s focus on that.