The Daily Background
| USA Today gets to the bottom of the “Michael Moore Iran” story– With TDB’s help
by Arlen Parsa
Good news. After I sent a couple of emails around, USA Today’s On Deadline blog has printed an update to the false “Michael Moore is going to Iran” story. The Mike Carney of USAT writes in an addendum to the original post:
Update at 7:29 a.m. ET on Tuesday: We received an e-mail late last night from Arlen Parsa, a blogger who writes The Daily Background, taking issue with this posting. “One of your blog stories has been debunked– Please print a retraction,” he writes.
Carney then goes on to quote from my report printed late last night debunking the story. Later, Carney got to the bottom of the story. It seems that the festival invited him, and the news of the invitation was later mis-reported as an acceptance of an invitation. Carney writes in a followup:
On Deadline has additional information about a posting that we published yesterday, based on a report from Iran, that said director Michael Moore will be traveling to Tehran later this year to present his film about health care at the capital’s film festival.
Meghan O’Hara, a producer of Sicko, issued a statement last night denying that the documentarian will be participating in the festival.
The Iranian Students News Agency continues to report that Moore will be in Tehran to participate in the Documentary & Experimental Film Center’s festival in October. But one of the event’s organizers tells On Deadline that the critically acclaimed director has not responded to their invitation.
“We’d really love to have the film,” Massoud Bakhshi, the group’s head of international affairs, says in a telephone interview.
Arlen,
Good job on unearthing the truth and for taking my little jabs in stride. You should be commended on pursuing the truth. Although I don’t think everything here is an unbiased representation of “truth”, I do think you are well researched and provide substance to back up your stories (nor do I think FoxNews, CNN, NBC, NY Tmes, etc. are unbiased). You have to read enough to see the truth come out of all the “vendors.” Thanks for taking the ribbing and I wish you well.
Haha, thanks Joe. Unlike “real” media outlets, I don’t pretend to be unbiased; I am biased, and I don’t try to hide that fact (as you can probably tell).