Chris Wattie, the writer of the original National Post story highlighting a supposed new law requiring Jews to wear badges in Iran, is backpedaling from the story.

And Iranian officials deny the story:

Hormoz Ghahremani, a spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa, said in an e-mail to the Post yesterday that, “We wish to categorically reject the news item.

“These kinds of slanderous accusations are part of a smear campaign against Iran by vested interests, which needs to be denounced at every step.”

With all due respect, this story was disturbingly easy to believe.

AllahPundit has an extensive rundown of the unravelling of this story, and the debate over whether it is untrue.

Very interesting, in my opinion. I think it is a credit to the new media that if this story is wrong, it can be corrected pretty much in real time. The complete damage to the Iranian reputation cannot be undone here (har har), but unlike the old days, we don't need to wait for days and days and several news cycles to happen before the corrections come.

In fact, the corrections and the errors surrounding this story becomes a topic unto itself, and that is a healthy thing.

Let's give credit to WOOF (sorry) RealityBasedBob, who was skeptical from the beginning. That may have been a good call.

Trivial aside, the new category for this issue is MEDIA and not INTERNATIONAL SCENE. Heh, it is looking like an official MSM screwup and not an Iranian screwup.

Update: this story blew up big when Drudge posted it as a headline. Now . . . it has been removed and there is no mention anywhere of the story, a correction or retraction. Hmm, doesn't do much for the ol' credibility of the DrudgeReport in my opinion.

We here at SayAnything freely admit to and correct our mistakes! Uh, right Rob?

Crossposted from WILLisms.com