News media has a field day with altered weather map.

Writing instruments maker Newell Brands can thank US president Donald Trump for putting its Sharpie marker in the headlines across America earlier this month.

In what quickly became known as ‘Sharpiegate’, it all began when the president tweeted a warning about Hurricane Dorian and said that “in addition to Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated by the storm.”

Apparently, he was wrong about Alabama, and the Birmingham National Weather Service quickly corrected him.

President Trump, not to be corrected, displayed a map with a black outline of Alabama made by a Sharpie marker, quite distinct from a white outline of areas officially affected by Hurricane Dorian.

Weather reporters and other experts noticed that it looked like someone had drawn an extra little bubble onto a map of the path of a storm in a video of Trump talking about it. People started to wonder whether Trump or someone else had used a Sharpie pen — which the president is known to use — to doctor the map so it looked like he had been right

No-one has owned up to altering the map but CNN ran ‘Sharpiegate’ as its top story for several days.