Two days ago the NYT had a page A1 report on Iran Cracks Down on Dissent. It ran with a photo of a man being manhandled by the Iranian police.   

Michelle Malkin and the usual bunch of warmongering folks jumped to the story with additional pictures.

But the story was wrong and the NYT did "correct" the story, though you will only find the correction when you somehow go back to the original article linked above.

The headline over the article said that Iran was cracking down on dissent and “parading examples” in the streets, and one paragraph in the article also said that young men detained for wearing tight T-shirts or western-style haircuts had been “paraded bleeding through Tehran’s streets by uniformed police officers.” The Times caption on an official Iranian news agency photograph that ran with the article said that it showed a police officer punishing a young man in public for wearing un-Islamic clothing by forcing him to suck on a plastic container normally used for intimate hygiene, a punishment the article also asserted was for that offense.

But the man in the photograph, according to widespread Iranian news reports, was one of more than 100 people arrested recently on charges of being part of a gang that had committed rapes, robberies, forgeries and other crimes. The caption published on the Web site of the news agency, Fars, had said only that the man was being punished as part of a roundup of “thugs” in a Tehran neighborhood.

So how did this happen?

In this case, The Times relied on an interview with a researcher for a nongovernment agency that no longer operates within Iran who said the photograph was evidence of a more visible police role in public crackdowns on what the authorities consider immoral behavior. The reporter then wrongly interpreted what the researcher said as applying to a crackdown on dress, and incorporated the erroneous interpretation into the body of the article, without giving any indication of the source for it.

Oh, the reporter, unwilling to check original Iranian reporting, got punked by some NGO’s PR guy that doesn’t even work in Iran anymore – best guess: some part of the MEK cult organization. The reporter was to lazy to verify that account and hid his dubious sources. His editors didn’t mind.

Again the NYT and various other media get willingly manipulated and manipulate into preparing the information warfare battleground for an unprovoked attack on a sovereign country.

Defense Tech headlines Iranian Techniques Tested in Iraq on a piece that has no fact regarding "Iranian techniques" or "tested in Iraq". The British Sun has some (black?) helicopters from Iran invade Iraq to attack Our Boys – no fact included either.

This campaign for war on Iran has now gained significant speed with multiple stories per day, each recycled and echoed in other "news" accounts until they are taken as "truth."

It will be hard to keep up with all these false claims. To refute them again and again will become the equivalent of fighting windmills.

Somehow I am amazed that this can happen again.