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Last week, as you may recall, The National Post in Canada published a story claiming that the Iranian parliament has passed a law "that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims."

After the report, news organizations scrambled to confirm the potentially explosive story. It was mentioned on MSNBC and Fox News Channel, among other outlets. The New York Post ran the story under the full-page headline "Fourth Reich." But many news outlets, including CBS News, avoided it. "There are too many red flags here," CBS News Radio Executive Producer Charlie Kaye told me. "…at this point we're not comfortable putting it on the radio."

Yesterday the cautious got their vindication: The Post apologized for the story, which was sourced to "Iranian expatriates living in Canada."

"It is now clear the story is not true," National Post's editor in chief Douglas Kelly wrote in an editorial. "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." (The editorial does not presently seem to be available on the National Post website.)

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Here we go. The National Post in Canada has published a story claiming that the Iranian parliament has passed a law "that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims." The story is sourced to "Iranian expatriates living in Canada."

So far, at least MSNBC and Fox News Channel have mentioned the story, and it has been the dominant story of the day in the blogosphere. Right now, mid-afternoon, many news outlets are in a scramble to find out if it is true. The Iranian embassy has denied it, and Mohammad Mohammadi, press officer at the Iranian mission to United Nations, told CBS News Radio the story is "completely untrue."

The Drudge Report has had a link to the story at the top of its page all day. CBSNews.com has not mentioned it. "It's potentially an explosive story but we won't touch it until we have some sort of concrete confirmation, and we haven't come close to that," says Dan Collins, senior producer for CBSNews.com.

CBS News Radio has also decided against running the story, according to Exective Producer Charlie Kaye. "There are too many red flags here," he says. "The best we can determine is this has originated with Iranian dissidents in Canada. We have spoken to a CBS News correspondent just back from Iran and her producer, we've spoken to the Iranian mission to the UN, we've spoken to our State Department Reporter Charlie Wolfson, and at this point we're not comfortable putting it on the radio." The story has run on WCBS 880 local radio news here in New York, however.

Stay tuned.

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