Topic: WorldNetDaily
For some reason, WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi -- who's desperately trying to prove that the long-form birth certificate released by President Obama is fake -- is obsessing over actual fake birth certificates.
Corsi promises in a June 13 article that this is "the first in a series examining the role supporters of Barack Obama have played in forging fraudulent birth certificates." But Corsi whitewashes the role he and WND played in promoting those birth certificates without bothering to verify them first.
Corsi writes:
On Aug. 2, 2009, WND reported that eligibility lawyer Orly Taitz had made public what became known as the "Bomford" birth certificate, seen here as Exhibit 1, by filing a motion in federal court to determine the document's authenticity.
Taitz's filing of the Bomford birth certificate caused such a stir that a thread discussing the document on Free Republic drew more than 10,000 postings.
On Aug. 4, 2009, Joseph Farah wrote an editorial expressing strong suspicions the document was not authentic.That same day, Internet bloggers revealed that the Bomford birth certificate had been forged from an authentic "Certified Copy of Registration of Birth" issued in 1964 to an Australian citizen, David Jeffrey Bomford, born April 10, 1959, at Thebarton Community Hospital, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
What Corsi doesn't tell you: WND endeavored to portray the Bomford certificate as authentic.
As we detailed, WND asserted in that Aug. 2 article that "WND was able to obtain other birth certificates from Kenya for purposes of comparison, and the form of the documents appear to be identical." WND followed up the next day with an article touting how the document "has been entered into the Congressional Record – by a Democrat no less." Another article, on Aug. 4, noted the Washington Independent's detailing of how the document is apparently a altered version of an Australian birth certificate, but it devoted more text to how a website linked to Taitz "provided replies to the point-by-point criticisms."
While Farah did aver that the birth certificate might not be authentic in his Aug. 4 column, he ignored the fact that WND conferred a level of legitimacy on it by publishing it -- and utterly failed in its journalistic duty by refusing to attempt to verify it beforehand.
Corsi also fails to reconcile WND's initial claim that "WND was able to obtain other birth certificates from Kenya for purposes of comparison, and the form of the documents appear to be identical" with his own claim in an Aug. 6 article that "WND obtained several samples of Kenyan birth certificates in use around Aug. 4, 1961, the date of Obama's birth, showing differences from the Taitz document." Those Kenyan documents couldn't have both proved and disproved the certificate.
As a final touch, Corsi references how "scanner expert Doug Vogt has filed criminal charges with the FBI, alleging that the Obama birth certificate released by the White House April 27 was fraudulently created" without mentioning evidence discrediting Vogt's claims.
