Reports untrue: Steve Jobs did not appear at Disney meeting
A Marketwatch report that Steve Jobs, currently on medical leave from Apple, appeared at a Disney shareholder meeting was untrue, and has been corrected.
Just to get this out of the way up front, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did NOT make an appearance earlier Tuesday at Disney's annual shareholder meeting.
Marketwatch's RealTime Headlines section reported Tuesday that Jobs did show up at Disney's meeting--which would have marked his first public appearance since announcing a six-month medical leave of absence--and the Internet was off to the races. ZDNet's Sam Diaz captured screengrabs of the original headlines here. Marketwatch did not correct its headline for over an hour, posting the headline at 1:12 p.m. EDT and not posting a correction until 2:32 p.m. EDT.
As of this writing, several blogs and Twitter users are still reporting that Jobs did appear at the meeting. Ordinarily, it wouldn't have been odd to see Jobs at a Disney annual meeting: he's a member of the board of directors and the single largest individual shareholder in the company with 7 percent of its stock following Disney's acquisition of Pixar.
But Jobs didn't even show up at Apple's annual shareholders meeting due to his medical leave of absence. It seems Marketwatch, while watching a Webcast of the Disney event, was confused by questions about Jobs' large stake in Disney and potential contingency plans if his shares were to hit the open market; a polite way of asking whether Disney thought Jobs was going to die.
In any event, Jobs was easily re-elected to Disney's board of directors.