Topic: WorldNetDaily
On April 28, WorldNetDaily shot down the idea that the existence of layers in the PDF version of President Obama's long-form birth certificate was evidence of fraud. It even stated, "While there may be other challenges to the document's authenticity that bear further scrutiny, it appears that the 'layer argument' can be easily explained," and cited a commenter at the far-right website Free Republic as backup.
Well, forget about that. WND -- in an apparent desperate attempt to find something, anything to discredit Obama -- has changed its mind.
A May 1 WND article by Bob Unruh quotes a "computer document expert" claiming there are "anomalies inconsistent with a simple scanning process, and there is evidence it has been manipulated, but there's no way to determine exactly what may have been modified." But buried in Unruh's article is the evidence that destroys the big conspiracy, citing the report by "expert" Ivan Zatkovich:
"All of the overlays were of a higher resolution than the background layer," the report said. "This suggests that the overlays [were] created to enhance that content (i.e. make the text darker and/or the edges sharper). The only two plausible explanations for this pattern of layers is: 1. Someone was changing the content of both the text and the stamps. 2. Someone was systematically enhancing the black text layers for legibility, and then enhancing the stamp overlays separately for legibility."
[...]
Zatkovich told WND that the White House image "has specific content extracted from that base layer and enhanced."
He said, "This was done through an explicit operation to edit and/or enhance the printing in the document. There is no ambiguity here. There was an explicit action by a person to modify the document. … Mostly like to enhance the legibility, but still an explicit action none the less."
In short: The certificate was scanned into a computer and sharpened in Photoshop before being saved as a PDF. Of course, Unruh waits until the 17th paragraph -- well after the scaremongering about alleged manipulation -- before bothering to report that.
Meanwhile, a separate May 1 article attempted to discredit one expert who was "the first forensics analyst to weigh in on the validity of the document" by digging up a positive review of a book about Obama's presidential campaign he allegedly wrote on Amazon.com.
Of course, by the same standard, WND is not credible because it puts its anti-Obama agenda before the truth. But don't look for WND to apply that standard to itself.
