A few days late and many dollars short, but you take what you can get from warmongers:
TORONTO — A Canadian newspaper apologized Wednesday for publishing an erroneous story last week claiming that an Iranian law would require Jews and Christians to wear badges identifying them as religious minorities. […]
Douglas Kelly, editor-in-chief of the National Post, ran a column on page 2 Wednesday explaining the story was based on a column by Amir Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, and two expatriates Iranians living in Canada.
More details below the fold.
The full text of Mr Kelly’s column is behind a subscription firewall, but courtesy of The Gazetteer here’s an excerpt of what Kelly had to say about this journalistic fraud:
It is now clear the story is not true. Given the seriousness of the error, I felt it necessary to explain to our readers how this happened.
The story of the alleged badge law first came to us in the form of a column by Amir Taheri. Mr. Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, has written widely on Iran for many major publications. In his column, Mr. Taheri wrote at length about the new law, the main purpose of which is to establish an appropriate dress code for Muslims. Mr. Taheri went on to say that under the law, “Religious minorities would have their own colour schemes. They will also have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faith.”
This extraordinary allegation caught our attention, of course. The idea that Iran might impose such a law did not seem out of the question given that its President has denied the Holocaust and threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” We tried to contact Mr. Taheri, but he was in transit and unreachable……
{snip}
We acknowledge that on this story, we did not exercise sufficient caution and skepticism, and we did not check with enough sources. We should have pushed the sources we did have for more corroboration of the information they were giving us. That is not to say that we ignored basic journalistic practices or that we rushed this story into print with no thought as to the consequences. But given the seriousness of the allegations, more was required.
We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story. We take this incident very seriously, and we are examining our procedures to try to ensure such an error does not happen again.
In short, he admits they swallowed Taheri’s lie hook, line and sinker because it fit their preconceived notions about Iran. He didn’t bother to source check Taheri’s story because, after all, he was a well known Iranian journalist who had published stories in many publications (like the conservative National Review, and the New York Post for example) and therefore he must be reputable. The fact that he no longer lives in Iran, had been a supporter of the Shah before the Iranian revolution and is a fervent opponent of Iran’s current regime was simply not taken into account as a possible bias on his part.
Of course, our friends in the right wingnutosphere will continue to push this story, even though the initial newspaper that ran with it has now apologized for publishing a lie, even though every serious news organization that has looked into this has thoroughly debunked it as blatant propaganda. Why?
Because it fits with their worldview, and with their desire to see another “evildoer” attacked by the US military, to see the bombs fly and explode from 10,000 feet, to see the plumes of flames and smoke, to revisit “shock and awe” once more on their television sets. Because they want to kill more Muslims frankly, and they will believe anything that will justify their vicarious murderous impulses. They are like the mobs that showed up at lynchings, cheering on those who tied the nose and kicked out the support underneath the legs of the poor soul about to have his neck stretched. Oh, they would never do the dirty deed themselves, never risk soiling their own hands, but my how they will lead the cheers from the sidelines.
And the people who fabricate these lies, and then seek to insinuate them into the public discourse know this about their intended audience. The purveyors of these psy-op campaigns know that those on the right are only too willing to buy into the deception and present it as truth, and all too ready to slander and smear anyone who dares expose the truth behind these sordid deceits. And they blame the left for moral relativism?
Pathetic, but also sad and frightening that this is what we have become. A nation of divided souls, divided between those who want the lies to be true, and those who want the lies exposed.
Update [2006-5-25 9:28:11 by Steven D]: Here’s the link to the Taheri story in the New York Post.
Iran Dress Code story retracted
