“Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Mark Twain would say here, and the same holds true for Steve Jobs, Apple CEO. The reports in question here were made by “johntw,” a user for iReport, a user-generated “citizen journalism” site run by CNN.com. According to the article published there, Steve Jobs, who is a survivor of pancreatic cancer, had suffered a heart attack and had been rushed to hospital.

The “news” item was immediately infirmed by Apple spokesman Steve Dowling. "It is not true," he promptly retorted.

Not quick enough though, because the stock market reaction was violent: Apple stocks dropped immediately from US$106.50 down to $94.65, lower than they’ve been in 17 months. The stocks subsequently recovered, but the scare would have been enough to give Jobs a heart attack. We’re just glad he didn’t have one.

Jeff Jarvis incisively commented via CNNMoney.com "It's a mistake to say this indicates some type of larger problem. People start rumors on Wall Street all the time. Anyone with any sanity would have said 'I'm going to check that out', not 'I'm going to sell all my stock'." Amid the broader market slide, people tend to react very emotionally, being very easy to sway by such rumours, and the Security and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation to see if the “report” of Jobs’ heart-attack wasn’t a deliberate ploy to drop Apple’s stock value.

Apple’s stocks ended the day 3% down, $97.07 even though the article was removed quickly from iReport.