James Taranto lies, misleads about Obama certificate issue

On July 30, 2009, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal offered "It's Certifiable/The last word on President Obama’s place of birth" [1] about the Obama citizenship issue. In the article Taranto lies, misleads, and generally gets things wrong.

1. He says: "The Honolulu Advertiser reported yesterday that Okubo and her boss, Chiyome Fukino, both confirm that Obama’s original birth certificate still exists. Fukino says she has seen it and that the information matches the now-official electronic records reflected on the certificate Obama has released." If you trust Taranto's reporting abilities, now please go read what Fukino actually said. Nowhere in her statement does she say anything about the picture that Obama has released on his website. He says Fukino said there's a match, but she didn't say that. Is Taranto hearing things? Is he just making things up? Is he incapable of reading and interpreting two-sentence statements? [2] Whatever the reason, he got it wrong and there's no correction appended to the article. Note that about a week later, Hawaii confirmed that they have not authenticated the picture on Obama's site.

2. He says: 'The document that Obama has released, which carries the title “certification of live birth,” confirms that the president was born in Honolulu. It is a legal birth certificate...' In fact, all Obama has released to the public is a picture of a supposed COLB; the only other group that's claimed to have seen a paper copy is FactCheck. As others have, Taranto is confusing a picture of something and the thing itself; sometimes they're different. The picture on Obama's site has never been authenticated by any government authority. That means that much of Taranto's argument is based on faith and not on objective facts: he thinks the picture on Obama's site is accurate because he doesn't think Obama was put a modified certificate on his site. Personally, I think it's very unlikely that Obama was be that bold, but - unlike Taranto - I'm not confusing that belief with objective fact.

3. He says: 'FactCheck.org has a close-up photo of the certificate, which states clearly at the bottom: “This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.” If a court were somehow to take up the question of Obama’s eligibility, then, the birth certificate would almost certainly be sufficient to resolve the question in his favor.' Would a court accept a picture of the COLB in lieu of a verifiable paper copy? Not likely at all. Once again, Taranto can't tell the difference between a picture of an object and the object itself.

4. He says: "Obama has already provided a legal birth certificate demonstrating that he was born in Hawaii." That's inaccurate for the reasons outlined above; all Obama has done is released a picture that says he was born in Hawaii.

5. He says: 'The release of the obsolete birth certificate would not “resolve the issue” to those for whom it is not already resolved. They claim without basis that today’s birth certificate is a fake; there is nothing to stop them from claiming without basis that yesterday’s is as well.' First, he has no idea what all those who are concerned about this issue would accept as definitive proof. Second, a full release would include Obama's full file together with the history of that file, and that would most likely be in verifiable paper form. Third, what Taranto is doing is claiming with good - but not complete - basis that what Obama has released is accurate and that Hawaiian officials are telling the whole truth.

6. He says: "By ignoring [the "Birthers"], [Obama] actually reaps political benefits from their efforts. His critics, even those who are not birthers, end up looking like cranks by association... [William F. Buckley et al] succeeded in “excommunicating” the Birchers. It’s probably impossible to do the same to the birthers, because today the right wing is too vast to mount much of a conspiracy. The birthers are likely to be with us for as long as Obama is president--and because of them, it is more likely that this will be for the next 7½ rather than just 3½ years." Now, see this discussion of how people like Taranto are hurting the GOP as they help the Democrats and the mainstream media. Please don't let James Taranto do your strategizing for you.

Note also that Taranto references Jon Klein of CNN promulgating "information [that] appears to have been in error" and also points out how National Review got a fact relating to the Natural Born Citizen side of this issue wrong in their article about this issue. He should have concentrated on his own work first.

[1] online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574320190095246658.html

[2] Note that his excerpt above links to this now-disappeared page: honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090728/NEWS01/907280345 While exactly what was at that link isn't known, the "actually said" link above links to a USA Today article that hosts a Dan Nakaso article; that reporter works for the Honolulu Advertiser, and there's a very good chance that what's at the USA Today page (link) is the same article as was at the HA page. And, as noted in the update to the "actually said" link above, what was in the USA Today article matched up to her statement. In other words, there's a very good chance that what Taranto linked to had Fukino's full and correct statement. And, if it didn't, why didn't he wait until he saw the statement? I didn't trust what Nakaso said until I saw the statement on hawaii.gov. If Taranto is going on reporter interpretations of statements rather than the statements themselves, what sort of journalist is he?

Sun, 09/27/2009 - 05:00 · Importance: 4