Topic: NewsBusters
A Nov. 4 WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling howled: "Armed Black Panthers blocked a doorway to a polling location and intimidated voters in Philadelphia, Pa., according to Republican poll observers." Schilling told only the point of view of those "Republican poll observers" as reported by Fox News, baselessly asserted that "one of many cases of intimidation against people who do not support Obama at Philadelphia polling sites," and made no attempt to tell the other side of the story.
By contrast, TPM's Greg Sargent reports:
Fox News and other conservatives on the Web are pushing hard on the story that two black panthers may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia.
But an Obama campaign volunteer who's been on the scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that there's been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. And a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said the two men aren't in any way affiliated with the campaign.
Fox News' story is right here. It says one of two black panthers on the scene was "allegedly blocking the door," says another was "holding a nightstick." and adds that "the concern was that they were intimidating people who were trying to go inside to vote."
But Jacqueline Dischell, the Obama volunteer, tells me by phone that that's false.
[...]
There was no fight, nothing," she says.
Fox News arrived on the scene at around that time and started interviewing people near the entrance. The building manager asked the Fox reporter to leave, she says, and he moved further from the entrance.
That's where things now stand. "There has been no fighting, no voter intimidation at all," she said.
Why are Schilling and WND afraid to tell their readers the full story?
UPDATE: Newsmax is afraid too: A Nov. 4 article by David Alliot also fails to tell the full story, taking the lazy way out by similarly limiting himself to regurgitating Fox News' version of events.
