I wouldn’t care if Jake Tapper was just a conservative reporter who focused primarily on stories that are of interest to Republicans. But what is absolutely not cool for any self-respecting journalist is Tapper’s constant pandering to the most dishonest corners of the conservative blogosphere and in particular the systematically dishonest hacks at breitbart.com.

Case in point: as has been extensively documented at this site, the right-wing claims that Chris Loesch was suspended as a result of a “coordinated blocking campaign from progressives” have been complete nonsense from the very beginning, and part of pattern for the Loeschs. Tapper recently filed a report on “How Twitter is Playing Politics” that accidentally debunked the wingnuts’ conspiracy theory. The report stated that Chris Loesch’s account was suspended because he was reported for spam only after he sent unsolicited messages to other Twiter users. In other words, it couldn’t have been an Evil Coordinatedz Campaign by Liberals unless those liberals have developed mind-control technology that forced Chris Loesch to send unsolicited messages to people.

But Tapper being Tapper, he skillfully edits the interview in a way that sounds like it vindicates the Loeschs’ claim that this was all an evil conspiracy by liberals, and he ignores the fact that the whole premise of the right-wing’s “liberal suppression of free speech” narrative was undermined by the fact that Loesch was suspended not as a result of other people targeting him, but because he sent unsolicited tweets to too many people with his recently created account.

Oh, and by the way, since Charles Johnson didn’t send Chris Loesch any tweets in the period where Loesch was suspended, he wouldn’t make a very good Evil Puppet Master in this case. This disappointing revelation is still consistent with him being an Evil Puppet Master in all other cases, however.

You can watch Tapper’s report here (relevant part starts at about the 3:45 mark):

Editor’s note: Asked to comment on this Page, Jake Tapper emailed the following statement:

Charles, thanks for allowing me a moment to respond to this confusing post, to make sure no one misunderstood anything. The facts as I described them in the digital show were how an executive from twitter described the back-and-forth. I specifically avoided the details, as well as the charges and countercharges about conspiracies and such, and just went into the events broadly, as they were described to me. Thanks!