SEC investigating false rumor on Jobs' health

The Securities and Exchange Commission will investigate Friday's false report that Steve Jobs was whisked to the emergency room, AppleInsider reports. The inquiry: Was the posting on CNN's iReport an attempt to manipulate the market?

CNN pulled the page after Apple denied the rumor. AP just reported that CNN will hand over the user information to the SEC.

CNN spokeswoman Jennifer Martin said the SEC contacted iReport.com Friday afternoon, and that the site's staff is "doing its best to provide them with information about the posting."

Martin said that "Johntw," the author of the Steve Jobs post, had never posted in iReport.com before. She did not know when the person joined the site.

While the DMCA provides safe harbor to sites against liability for user-generated content, the episode displays the risks of "citizen journalism." With the CNN brand all over the page, there's no real difference between CNN real journalism and user-generated reports – at least in the eye of the public, says Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute:

"How could you possibly allow just anybody to post just anything under your label unless you have blazing billboards that say, 'None of this has been verified, we've not looked at any of this, we have no idea if this is true'?"