ABC News' Jake Tapper published the following Tweet yesterday, showing cranes removing a U.S. flag from the Ground Zero site with the caption, "One minute to air and they decided to take the flag down from the live shot".
Some conservative bloggers took this to mean that President Obama ordered the removal of the flag.
And they all picked it up. Malkinvania, Weasel Zippers, Matt Drudge. Funny thing happened on the way to Ground Zero.
One problem. It isn't true. Multiple photos show that the flag was on full display when Obama arrived at Ground Zero. Tapper's tweet was posted at 6:30 pm -- hours after the President had left. In all likelihood, Tapper was saying that the flag was being removed before his live shot for ABC World News when he made his tweet.
To their credit, both Malkin and Ross have acknowledged that they got the story wrong, though Malkin erased her erroneous post rather than add a correction to the initial, inflammatory post, while Ross claimed "perhaps Tapper just confused all of us" and added, "I'm sticking by my "Marxist coup d'état" comment."
Conservative media correcting falsehoods is the exception to the norm (here are just a few from Malkin and Ross that have gone uncorrected). Perhaps if they checked if a story sounded plausible before running with it, they'd spread less untruths.
Oops. Facts don't matter when you have HOT DRUDGE SIREN WOOP WOOP WOOP ACTION to go with.
In all seriousness, folks, Michelle Malkin is still taken seriously by the Village and ends up on TV quite a bit. Perhaps somebody should pay attention to this flag story the next time they think of calling Malkin in as an expert on anything other than "suffering from serious delusions."
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