“The story, marked ‘Hold for release – Do not use’, was sent in error to the news service’s thousands of corporate clients,” Matthew Moore reports for The Telegraph. “The stock obituary was published ‘momentarily’ after a routine update by a reporter, and was ‘immediately deleted’, Bloomberg said.”
“Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, but there is no suggestion that the news wire has recent news on his health,” Moore reports. “Most media organizations regularly update their pre-prepared obituaries of newsworthy figures. The obituary contained blank spaces for Jobs’s age and cause of death to be inserted.”
Read the full article here.
Caroline McCarthy reports for CNET, “It’s not out of the ordinary at all that Bloomberg would have this written; all major news outlets have notable persons’ obituaries prepared in advance so that only minor changes need be made at the actual time of death. That way, the news can be reported almost immediately and can be updated with further detail.
But a Jobs obituary, however premature, is more chilling than, say, a Bill Gates obituary.”
“So given a CEO whose health has been discussed so speculatively in the echo chamber of the blogosphere, and whose company’s stock has been shown to be far from immune to the influence of the rumor mill, the appearance–however brief–of a Jobs obituary online must certainly have been disquieting for those who stumbled upon it,” McCarthy reports.
McCarthy reports, “Bloomberg released a retraction later on Wednesday that made only the vaguest of reference to the content of the gaffe. ‘An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today,’ the retraction read. ‘The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Vague Nomenclature” and “Adam W.” for the heads up.]
Once upon a time, they said Apple was “dead,” too.
Um, hello, SEC? We have a few questions:
• How does a text update get “mistakenly” posted live online at Bloomberg, exactly?
• Did anyone profit from this “mistake?”
• If so, are they connected in any way to those who “mistakenly” posted this story at Bloomberg?
Just goes to show ya’ . . . there’s always another way to manipulate the AAPL stock price.
And people here bitch when rumors about product is posted?
Sorry, a major news outlet doing this is much, much worse.
I HEREBY DECLARE BLOOMBERG THE NUMBER #1 ASSHATS OF THE ENTIRE INTERNET.
…. and after this, the stock finally goes up.
Ohhhhhh the irony.
What a bunch of “Blooming” idiots!
Listen! You can hear the laughter coming from Cupertino….
How did this happen…this is way more than fishy.
If the stock tanked because of this quote “mistake”, then Bloomberg would be multi-sued.
Again, how did this “accidently” get published?
Someone dropped a Stealth Ballmer.
Ballmer requested a brief moment of silence for the loss of the head of Microsoft’s R & D Department.
Long Live Steve
Hey, it happens. The news has to be ready. They have obits for everyone incase something suddenly happens. I can guarantee, they already have (had) an article at the touch of a button that said. “Jobs Indicted for Stock Backdating”.
Nice intern…er…article MDN
This is callous in the extreme. Talk about supreme bad taste…
(And the fact they were ‘preparing’ the obituary is plain sick in itself I find, personally.)
It’s such a shame when people resort to this to scare investors and insult the person in question. And I really doubt this release was accidental in the slightest.
May Steve live long and continue to defy the expectations of morons, anywhere, anytime.
Update is one thing, how does it get published to the Wire.
Apple should take the opportunity to take them to court for all they have. Apple has to start fighting these blatant stock manipulations.
Just my $0.02
That was very interesting reading.
Illegitimate, adopted, half-Syrian whose NeXT Computer Company created the World Wide Web, the point and click computer interface, the iPod, iMac and iPhone and several of the highest grossing animated movies of all time…
I used to invent stuff out of my own garage all the time (the same year as Jobs was doing it)…what happened?
Off topic and I wouldn’t normally do this (the previous ‘Music Cartels’ posting comments board is pretty full up) but let’s have your comments on the RIAA’s latest pile of propoganda pap at:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/propogandacomic.pdf
Somewhere in the financial universe there are a group of Bloomberg employees who must of decided to do short sales of Apple shares and make some dough via a false story. I smell a rat the size of an elephant here. And it stinks like elephant doo-doo.
Do they have an obituary for the head of Bloomberg’s news group and the webmaster there too?
All this does is stir up the health issues comments again…
FWIW, Bloomberg himself is doing a pretty good job as Mayor.
I am sure Jobs gave him an angry phone call.
The news of my death was greatly exaggerated.
S. Jobs
It’s not just an anti-Apple attitude. These things happen as genuine mistakes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_premature_obituaries
The world we live in sucks in so many ways. To know that there are people that appear to be clamoring for someone to die is saddening, although not surprising.
i4Design, your post gets my vote! Nice.
Andy Hertzfeld of the Macintosh development team once mistakenly stated that Anya Major, the sledgehammer thrower in the 1984 Apple commercial died of breast cancer in 2000. That’s a strange mistake. (And no, it doesn’t excuse Bloomberg’s carelessness.)
Well skeletor has been looking rather thin lately.