PressEthic

An AP story published by CNN says there have been “complaints of vote buying, polling place fights, fraudulent voter lists and other political chicanery,” but it doesn’t quote a single eyewitness.

The closest it gets is paraphrasing Hafez Abu Saada, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, who “complained of what he termed NDP-organized violence by private toughs to discourage opposition voters in the last hours of voting, especially in districts where ruling party candidates faced serious opposition challenges.” Saada also complained that the government was busing employees “to a single polling place and allowing them to vote -- in a district in which they were not registered -- for an NDP candidate whose victory was not assured.”

Those are pretty weighty “complaints” to throw out and not back up with an eyewitness account.

Reuters, on the other hand, quoted two eyewitnesses:

One voter there, Karim Mahmoud, said: “This is not democracy. Thugs intimidated me with knives. Only when security forces came much later was I able to go inside.

Wael Omar, a cameraman for the monitoring group Shayfeenkum (We are watching you), said a fight broke out at a polling station in the Torah area.

I was filming (the fight) when an NDP-backed thug punched me in the mouth, insulted me and told me to leave. Security people just stood by.

The Financial Times even cited itself as a witness:

Violations were witnessed by the Financial Times: the brother of a candidate for parliament from the ruling NDP in the Shubra district of Cairo shut the door to a polling booth and began stuffing the ballot box while, in another Cairo district, female NDP supporters were bussed in to vote with only party cards as ID.

AP should have done the same.