WorldNetDaily publishes lies — at least that’s the case if you believe WND founder Joseph Farah. Farah told Obama Conspiracy Theories:
Apparently you don’t understand the difference between commentary and news reporting.
I know of no news organization in the world that even pretends to hold commentators to the same standard of accuracy and truth as they have for news. Do you? Bill Press lies in the pages of WND in my opinion every week. But we give our commentators wide latitude to make their case. That’s probably a concept you would never comprehend.
Email from Joseph Farah, 8 February 2010
That email is in line with what Farah said in an email exchange with Justin Eliot with Salon.com as reported in a new article on Media Matters for America.
WorldNetDaily doesn’t give its readers clear guidance on whether they are reading commentary (where lies are OK) and reporting where it supposedly isn’t. Staff writers, such as Bob Unruh, are allowed to repeat lies, so long as they originate with commentators. Sometimes lying WND articles are unattributed, leaving readers in the dark about whether they are reading articles or commentary. While it is often said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts, it appears that WorldNetDaily believes that their commentators are allowed their own facts.
WND is reeling from a recent scandal in which anti-Obama writer Jack Cashill presented a family photo of Barack Obama which he claimed was the original of a photo where Obama had been Photoshopped in. The problem is that the so-called “original” still has part of Barack Obama’s leg in it. That is, Cashill showed a fake original from which Barack Obama had been Photoshopped OUT. Unlike most WND lies, this one was actually covered up (scrubbed without comment) by WND rather than left to stand. I guess WND is not consistent about when it believes its commentators can lie and when they can’t; maybe it has something to do with how obvious and how embarrassing the lie is. Previously the lie about Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan representing Barack Obama on eligibility cases was also removed, although with minor acknowledgment. The lie about the travel ban to Pakistan, remains.
Media Matters for America provides a long list of WND lies and misinformation, and shows many instances from both commentators and staff writers. But they didn’t mention the travel ban to Pakistan!
WorldNetDaily web site rankings have dropped significantly from number 500 in the US to number 720, according to web rating site Alexa.com, since we last published WND rankings last June. I hope that means their readers are fed up with the lies.
I also notice that they’re soon going to be changing it from World Net Daily to just WND. Probably so they can’t be called Whirled Nut Daily, anymore 😉
But I do have one question. I see that they are making a lot of hay over that long form that Danae supposedly got from Hawaii to settle that bet with james777
What was the final verdict on that? Trustworthy or fraud?
I don’t know that there was any consensus reached. I personally believe that the non-certified copy is real. I have my doubts about the Miki certified copy though.
it’s OK, lie for Jesus is their moto, check out Chuckie Norris column. I would say WND’s blatant show of stupidity is worse than their lies. WND fans don’t know about the lies, actually they relish it.
Did you look at the enhanced image which Reality Check linked to in another thread? It looks like the birth certificate which Miki produced was issued in 2001, not 2011.
Somehow the new media needs to find a paradigm that encourages quality journalism – we need the cream rising to the top rather than the bad money driving out the good…
I have heard barnyard animals become skittish when Joseph Farah is near. He never denied it.
The latest news is that according to The Post & Email, it was possible to get a long form birth certificate in Hawaii until yesterday (April 12), when Hawaii suddenly changed its policy, and now you can’t get it. http://www.thepostemail.com/2011/04/12/breaking-f… (Maybe it was earlier than yesterday, and we just found out about it on April 12.)
This is the latest laugh in the saga of the “yes you can get a long-form birth certificate in Hawaii now” claims, and of the two birthers who claim to have gotten long-form birth certificates recently—-whose assertions and the images of their allegedly recently obtained long-forms are on-line at WND.
Here is the switch. One of the two persons who claims to have gotten long-form BCs within the last few months called up The Post & Email and said that a friend they knew went to the DOH yesterday morning and, what do you suppose? Why, the guy could NOT get his long form birth certificate. He asked for it, and was told that Hawaii does not issue it anymore. Surprised? No one who had read the DOH statement of last year and recent Hawaii attorney general’s statement Hawaii it does not send out long forms anymore would be surprised, but, well, this birther said she was surprised.
She claimed that the guy actually had gotten his long-form birth certificate a few weeks ago, after 2001 when the Certification of Live Birth became the official birth certificate, as she has claimed that she has done also. So the explanation she gives is that Hawaii changed its rules overnight, or a few days ago—or whenever.
Well, if you believe this, you can believe in the tooth fairy. Remember the officials said in June of last year, that the policy had been in effect since 2001 http://archives.starbulletin.com/content/20090606…. And, as I pointed out earlier, that was in Hawaii newspaper, where if that were not true, DOH clerks or people who got their long-form birth certificates could call or write the paper that the statement was not true.
Yet the latest “I got my long form” story holds that even though the officials in Hawaii made that statement in June of last year, they were lying in that public statement. She claims that you could get it.
On the other hand, her latest story says that you cannot get a long-form birth certificate NOW, but that that is a new policy, one that was imposed within the last few days, perhaps as a result of WND and The Post & Email running their stories, or perhaps (P&E speculation) to bolster the recent statement of former DOH head Fukino that you cannot get long form birth certificates.
So according to this, you could get the long form from 2001 until sometime in April 2011, despite officials in Hawaii saying that you couldn’t get it. And now, just when it becomes clear that you could get it (or so they say), you can’t.
But there is a simpler explanation: That you could not get the long-form all along, and that the people who said that you could and that they did get theirs were lying.
Then, when it became obvious that the publicity of the WND and Post & Email stories would lead to people actually going to the DOH and asking for their long-form birth certificates and not getting them, they had to create a new story. And the new story has to fit the claim that those “long form” birth certificates they posted are real and were obtained recently.
But the allegation that Hawaii suddenly changed its policy from giving out long forms to not giving out long forms within the last few days has a glaring hole. IF Hawaii did make that change, it would have had to send out some kind of memo—since the DOH has various offices around Hawaii and not everyone is in at work at the same time, so policies have to be put in writing. And, if there were such a document, investigators could get it using the Hawaii version of the FOIA. (Don’t bet that birther blogs will file a request for such a document. They’d be afraid to hear “there isn’t one.”)
Or, the birthers sites could simply send representatives to walk up to the birth certificate windows at DOH offices and ask the clerks “have you had a new change in policy not to give out long-form birth certificates in the last week or two or so?” But, what if the clerk answers: “New policy, we have had it in force since 2001?”
But then WND or the Post & Email could have asked the clerks whether or not they could get long-form birth certificates all along, or at the very least they could have asked when the sites began to publish the claims of the people who claimed that they got long-forms recently. And WND ran a the image of a long-form birth certificate that it claims was obtained recently and appears to have Onaka’s signature on it, but WND never called him to check on whether Onaka signed it. Apparently, they are not really interested in checking to see whether a story is true or false, just that it is a birther claim.
WND, by the way, has not yet picked up on the Post & Email “scoop” that you suddenly cannot get the long-form birth certificate anymore because of a change in Hawaii policy. So, perhaps it thinks you can still get them. Or, maybe it has decided to check. That would be a change.
For some of us, the entire period from 20 Jan 2001 until mid 2008 is a nightmare we would sooner forget. Maybe 2001 to “last week” similarly collapses for this “guy”.
WND has scrubbed paragraphs from their posts before. Loren sometimes catches them. And I seem to recall one instance where they simply deleted the post.
I think they’re trying to cover now. they’ve been called on their ethics a lot by national bloggers. Thank you, Donald Trump. .
What do you expect from someone who is rumored to molest barnyard animals? Joseph Farah has never denied it – just like Glenn Beck.
A big shout out to Senator John Kyl.
“who is rumored to molest barnyard animals”
that is not a rumor, both I and Tim Adams spoke to 3 witnesses that saw him do this. Well actually 2 witnesses, the third was a goat (participant)
Someone in Tim Adams’ office told him. It’s an open secret.