Was disabled Air Force veteran James Berrie unable to vote after NBC set up their cameras and equipment in the handicapped spot in front of his polling station? No, that's not true: a partisan website published a news story based on real events but the headline above the story directly contradicted the article body and the Facebook post it was based on.
The headline appeared over an article published by The Daily Wire on November 4, 2018 titled "Disabled Vet Can't Vote After NBC Sets Up Cameras In Handicapped Parking Space, Refuses To Move" (archived here) which opened:
A disabled Air Force veteran says an MSNBC news crew blocked his way into a polling site in Houston when it parked in a handicapped parking spot.
"Went to vote, and found this waiting for us," James Berrie, who has multiple sclerosis, wrote on Facebook. "The only van accessible spot and they're filming in it. We asked them to move, pointed out how it was wrong, then went to vote, because it takes time to load up. But came out and still there. Not even packing up, still getting ready for their shot."
Bold emphasis ours.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail so they definitely would come away with the impression the man was denied the chance to vote:
Disabled Vet Can't Vote After NBC Sets Up Cameras In Handicapped Parking Space, Refuses To Move
A disabled Air Force veteran says an MSNBC news crew blocked his way into a polling site in Houston when it parked in a handicapped parking spot.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes dailywire.com as:
A news and opinion website covering politics and culture run by pundit and podcaster Ben Shapiro, that puts a conservative spin on content drawn from other news organizations.
According to NewsGuard the site can generally be trusted to maintain journalistic standards. Read their full assessment here.
But in this case their headline was clearly wrong: even James Berrie's own Facebook post about the incident (archived here) mentions that he did go in and voted:
Mariana Atencio of MSNBC later apologized for the incident on Twitter:
We made the wrong call today by using a disabled parking spot for our live shot in TX. There's no excuse. I apologize to the two people who were on their way to vote as it's one of the most important parts of our democracy; we'd never want to jeopardize anyone's ability to do so
-- Mariana Atencio (@marianaatencio) 30 oktober 2018
Preventing someone from voting is a terrible thing. Taking up a parking spot reserved for people with disabilities is a shitty thing. But in this case, only the shitty thing happened.
