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.
Doug Ross, in a post headlined, “WTF at WTC? Obama Has American Flag Removed From Ground Zero Site Moments Before Photo Shoot!”:
This administration and, by extension, the Democrat Party are now so thoroughly divorced from the history, traditions and morals of America that we might as well admit the Marxist left has executed a successful coup d'état on this Republic.
Weasel Zippers posted the story with the following headline:
Wow: Team Obama Removes American Flag From Ground Zero Moments Before Live Shoot...
What an absolutely pitiful little manchild Obama is. As if turning his back on Debra Burlingame (sister of Charles Burlingame who piloted the plane that went down at the Pentagon during 9/11) wasn't pitiful enough. Now we learn that the Obama regime had an American flag removed from the live shot of his photo op at Ground Zero today.
Does flying the American flag at Ground Zero now constitute “spiking the football???”
According to the Drudge Report Archives, Drudge ran a headline reading, “REPORT: Team Obama takes down US flag before Ground Zero event...” which linked to Tapper's tweet.
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.