OPEN THREAD: As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and legacy, we ask what does King and his dream mean to you today?

In 2005, Mayor Francis Slay was forced to defend his failures as a police board member. He was re-elected but his performance as the city’s only elected representative on the police board didn’t improve as scandal after scandal eventually got the attention of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney.

Well, St. Louis’ news media got the story wrong today. After the deadline to file for mayor ended at 5:00, with few reporters actually covering the event, the TV news stations reported falsely that State Senator Maida Coleman had filed for mayor. Channel 5 even claimed she did it an hour before they reported it at 5:02 PM.

But the St. Louis Post-Dispatch gets the prize for reporting completely false information. The website of the city’s only daily newspaper reported that Coleman decided not to run for mayor, which was factually incorrect.

What Coleman said in a press conference at the Election Board was that because it appeared that Mayor Slay was illegally backing a stalking horse to run in the Democratic primary, she would instead battle him as an Independent in a heads up race in the general election in April.

After the paper was called out on their error, they soon amended the misleading headline.