A gunman identified as James Holmes killed 12 people at the opening of the new Batman movie.
Details still are unclear as to who he is, but ABC News already has blamed the Tea Party because there is someone with a similar name who is a member of a local Tea Party group in that area. Plenty of people on Twitter and elsewhere are doing the same thing.
As usual, the hunt is on to tie a gunman to the Tea Party, as if there were cause and effect, and despite numerous such attempts in the past which failed.
Finding a Tea Party connection, once again, seems more important than focusing on the victims.
We’ll see how it plays out, but the meme already was set in the first moments by ABC News.
Updates: The Other McCain and HotAir have updates on the shooting and the victims.
Via the HotAir link, Politico reports that ABC already has walked back the claim that the gunman was connected to the Tea Party, although it buried the correction:
An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. Several other local residents with similar names were also contacted via social media by members of the public who mistook them for the suspect.
After extensive criticism, ABC updated its correction:
An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted.
Update No. 2: ABC News is in damage control mode, circulating this e-mail even to small time bloggers like me, re “ABC News Clarification and Comment on Earlier Reporting” containing the updates quoted above:
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