Joseph Farah Is a Very Confused Man

Joseph Farah, head honcho over at WorldNetDaily, posted an editorial of sorts a couple of weeks back about other reporters' attribution to a WND finding that Obama's Certification of Live Birth is authentic. Farah takes serious issue with this, and writes:

[A]s any regular visitor would know, I don't believe that document displayed on Obama's website proves anything about his eligibility for office – other than the fact that he seems intent on hiding something...

Here's an example. It's a constituent letter from Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash. He writes: "As you know, President-Elect Obama has indeed provided his actual paper Certification of Live Birth to several media organizations, as well as the Annenberg Foundation's non-partisan 'Factcheck.org' website and the conservative news website WorldNetDaily, which reported that a WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic.' In fact, all of these groups have recognized that the president elect's actual birth certificate document is real and genuine."

That statement is totally and obviously false...At no time did Obama ever make his actual birth certificate available to WND – or any other news organization.

WND did offer up to forgery experts the facsimile of a partial birth certificate posted on his website. None of them could report conclusively that the electronic image was authentic or that it was a forgery.

Written by Joseph Farah, posted on WND, December 20, 2008

So where, you ask, did Rep. Inslee get the idea that WND had authenticated the Certification? Why, he got it from WND:

A separate WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren't originally there.

Written by Drew Zahn, posted on WND, August 23, 2008

Both of these are WorldNetDaily articles, published within four months of each other. Look again at how they conflict:

Zahn, August 23: "A separate WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic."

Farah, December 20: "WND did offer up to forgery experts the facsimile of a partial birth certificate posted on his website. None of them could report conclusively that the electronic image was authentic or that it was a forgery."

What was a conclusive finding of authenticity in August is, by December, an inconclusive finding, with Farah berating other news agencies for reporting that WND had ever made a conclusive finding.

This should serve as an object lesson to anyone who considers WorldNetDaily to be a reliable news source. Because, apparently, even Joseph Farah doesn't consider WND's reporting to be reliable.