So, yes, it is stupid acting on something overheard on the bus or in a bar. But apparently there were some people out there who didn’t get the difference — who thought the information was coming from the bus drivers’ radio, not some random bus passenger. In your view, the site is “clearly labelled”: For someone who understands citizen journalism, it’s a no-brainer indeed. For others, the concept maybe isn’t as easy to grasp: If it says “iReport” on a CNN TV screen, it has been checked. If it says “CNN” on the iReport site, it has been checked. If it just says “iReport”, it has not necessarily been checked.

In i-Report CNN have created an innovative out-sourced (and off-site) way of generating Citizen Journalism without having to devote significant resource to filtering and checking it, at least within the i-Report site. However the attention given to this false story shows that there is at least some damage to the CNN brand, even thought it had not made its way into any formal CNN news products.

It will be interesting to see whether there are attempts to post other false stories to i-Report and whether CNN feels that it needs to introduce any professional pre-filtering in order to avoid further PR damage. The upside is that the moderation within the i-Report community does seem to have worked and I would hope that CNN stick to their guns and maintain i-Report in its current form at least for the time being.

Peter