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.

Just days after Sarah Palin divided Americans into “pro-America” and “anti-America” sections, and a McCain spokeswoman described certain areas of Virginia as “real Virginia” — oh, and lets not forget the made up story about how the McCain people were outraged by flags being left on the ground after Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Well, after John McCain’s rally in St. Charles yesterday, the giant flag used as his backdrop was dragged all over the ground by workers hired to take it down. A KSDK cameraman caught it on tape.

A spokeswoman for McCain’s campaign told KSDK: “We find the action, done by an outside vendor separate from the campaign, very troubling and have followed up with the vendor to express our displeasure. We take flag protocol very seriously and we will continue working to ensure our flag is given the proper respect.”