Geeesh. You wanna see just how lazy the media can be? AP was reporting a story on Iran. In that report, the told of an Iranian dissident group that is claiming that Iran is putting it's nuclear program under the names of front companies. You know, like naming the CIA operation in Vietnam "Air America", or the company that Valerie Plame worked for was "Brewster and Jennings". I know that because Vice President Cheney told me. Anyway, it's a common practice done to keep things under cover.

Except.

Fubar at Needlenose did something that the AP apparently couldn't be bothered to do. He used google to translate the cover company names from Farsi to English:

So I did what AP apparently didn't have time to do -- get a translation of the names. It didn't take long to find out what they really meant:

* Tamin Tajhizat Sanayeh Hasteieh: Corporation for Obtaining Nuclear Industries.

* Shakhes Behbood Sanaat: Division for Industrial Improvement.

* Sookht Atomi Reactorhaye Iran: Iranian Nuclear Reactor Fuel Company.

Go read Fubar's post, it has more wonderful tidbits. Once again (see: Chalabi, Ahmad) we have crack intelligence sources inside a hostile country feeding us horseshit. And AP was right there to lap it up without any skepticism or checking.

Hasn't our news media learned anything? AP has the power and ability to feed this crap to news organizations throughout the country leaving the impression, carefully planted, that Iran is hiding their nuclear program. By the way, as a side note, these new company names are actually much clearer in describing what the company does than the previous names. Anyway, even the most mainstream media is not to be trusted on any stories. I don't know if it has always thus been so, but it certainly is now.