WorldNetDaily’s anti-Obama slant continues in a pair of articles accusing the Obama campaign of creating “[a] team of Obama-supporting prosecutors and sheriffs in Missouri” to “pursue legal challenges to any presidential campaign ads deemed to be false or misleading.” WND cited a St. Louis TV report and such purportedly authoritative sources as “the blog Gateway Pundit,” “Missouri blogger Doctor Bulldog” and “the St. Louis Examiner” (which, as far as we can tell, is not an actual newspaper in St. Louis but a city-based portal web page run by Philip Anschutz’s conservative-leaning Examiner newspapers in Washington and San Francisco).
The articles baselessly suggest that this truth squad will use their official positions to legally harass anyone running ads critical of Obama. WND makes no apparent attempt to contact the Obama campaign or anyone else involved in the truth squad for a response to criticism it published by the National Rifle Association or Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt (whom WND fails to identify as a Republican who supports John McCain).
By contrast, the Springfield, Mo., News-Leader reported that “Despite having law enforcement officials on the truth squad, none of them have publicly said they will invoke their official powers to enforce facts about Obama’s record”and pointed out that Blunt was “[u]sing his taxpayer-funded press office to level a political attack” in issuing his response, quoted by WND, in which he called the truth squad “police state tactics.”
The News-Leader also reported that “a review of McCain’s own truth squads shows he has a district attorney from New Mexico and the South Carolina attorney general ready to respond to misleading ads from Obama and Democrats in their respective states.”
This is all information that was readily available, yet WND chose not to inform its readers about it, even though it’s essential to telling the full story here. But then, WND has an anti–Obama, pro-McCain agenda, so it’s sadly not surprising.