The Daily Background

On Monday, the internet was afire with a story about Michael Moore taking his new documentary “SiCKO” to Iran, to screen at a documentary film festival. Matt Drudge promoted a story on something called the “Iranian Students News Agency.”

“Writer, producer and director, Michael Moore is to come to Iran for the screening of his new production SICKO in the first international documentary film festival held here,” the report read.

The story was debunked hours later, by “SiCKO” producer and right-hand gal to Moore, Meghan O’Hara.

“There is absolutely no truth to the right wing promoted rumor that Michael is going to Iran — none, zero, zip,” O’Hara said Monday.

“This inaccurate rumor is an urban myth right up there with alligators in the sewers of New York City,” O’Hara continued. “It is getting pushed around out there by conservative opponents of Michael who would rather make up stories out of whole cloth than actually engage in a debate on the merits of our broken health care system or why it is that George W. Bush took us to war in Iraq.”

To this date, no news organizations or bloggers that picked up the original story claiming Moore would be visiting Iran have run a formal retraction, however had they looked closer, they might have noticed some suspicious of the authenticity of the supposed news report had they bothered to read the full report. See update below

Moore “makes the case that there is something wrong with Americans that we cannot learn from the successes of other countries in providing better quality-of-health than we enjoy in the USA,” it read, indicating that the writer was an American citizen.

The official website for the film festival makes no mention of Moore planning to attend.

Both mainstream sources such as USA Today’s “On Deadline” blog (See update below) as well as Rightward-leaning outlets such as Hot Air and the John Birch Society were quick to pick up on the alleged news that Moore was travelling to Iran, whose leaders are at odds with Washington over its nuclear program. See update below.

It should be noted that “ISNA” is not a professional news service. In addition, the url of the website which printed the report, www.isna.ir is not the official Iranian state news agency, (which has a similar url, www.irna.ir).

Update: After a tip from The Daily Background, USA Today’s On Deadline has done some more investigating of the story and gotten to the bottom of it.

Update 2: The John Birch Society issues an update, citing The Daily Background.

Filed under: Z-Feature