If the false post wasn’t enough of a pain for CNN (the owner of iReport), the SEC is now investigating the false claims about Jobs. Registration on iReport.com only requires a working email address, but CNN is handing over what information they have about the author of the Steve Jobs post.

Twitter was abuzz with news of Steve Job’s heart attack, and many considered the value of their Apple stock declining in tweets to this popular micro-blogging service. Anecdotally, I noted very few tweets relating to the story being revealed as bogus once Apple rejected the claim. Much work is going in to correct the rumor and speculation, but for Apple, the damage is ongoing. 

Who is ultimately responsible for ‘citizen journalists’? If we, as bloggers can post to mainstream media news sites, what obvious system is in place to ensure the accuracy of each post? Offline when I take my old clothes to a consignment shop for donation, each item goes through a simple inspection to make sure they’re up to the stores quality standard. Certainly online, when ‘citizen journalists’ have the ability to post news stories which can erase millions of dollars in market value, why isn’t there at least the most rudimentary quality standard in place? The short answer is speed. News networks are under increasing pressure to be the first to release an important news story, so they prefer to deal with possible consequences later rather than miss the opportunity to be the first. I submit that a simple quality check should be in place for all mainstream news sites, which requires first and last name, working email address and no submissions from a blocked IP address. Surely, there are simple workarounds to these rudimentary submission standards, but also as sure they will likely eliminate some of the market instability caused by the rumor mill.

What other submission standards should online news journals implement to help ensure the accuracy of stories submitted by ‘citizen journalists’? I’d like to hear your views.

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