Shannon Travis of CNN lies about Obama certificate issue

Shannon Travis of CNN offers "CNN Poll: Quarter doubt Obama was born in U.S." (link) which contains three lies about the Obama citizenship issue. Now, of course, just because Shannon Travis and dozens of other mainstream media sources have lied and misled about the easy-to-understand facts of that issue doesn't mean that Obama was born outside the U.S.: it just means those aren't reliable sources.

(Note: If you aren't familiar with my coverage of this issue, please take a minute first and see my discussion of why this is an important issue and my angle on it at that link. Please don't jump to conclusions as those who use words like "Birther" encourage you to do: they don't want you to think for yourself. instead, please read that last link if you haven't already.)

Here's a list of Shannon Travis' lies:

Lie #1:
Travis says: Hawaii has released a copy of the president's birth certificate - officially called a "certificate of live birth."

Fact
In fact, Hawaii hasn't "released" anything besides a couple of statements (first, second). The only release of a document is what was provided by the Obama campaign: a picture on his website. That picture was not released by the State of Hawaii: it was released by the Obama campaign. Who releases a document makes a very great deal of difference; Shannon Travis is implying that the picture on Obama's site was released by the State of Hawaii itself when that's not true.

Lie #2:
Travis says: And in 1961 the hospital where the president was born placed announcements in two Hawaiian newspapers regarding Obama's birth.

Fact
In fact, there's no proof that those announcements were placed by the birth hospital; see the post about Obama's birth announcements. Those announcements could have been placed by, for instance, Obama's grandparents and for a series of reasons. No one has proved they could have only come from a birth hospital or would indicate a Hawaiian birth. That doesn't mean that they were placed by the grandparents, just that no proof they could have only come from a hospital has been provided. See the link for the details.

Lie #3:
Travis says: President Obama’s birth certificate (left) has been certified authentic by the Republican governor of Hawaii. That's located under a picture of the certificate from Obama's site.

Fact
Please read what Linda Lingle said at that link. The key part of her quote is: "So I had my health director... go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health, and we issued a news release at that time saying that the president was, in fact, born at Kapi'olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii."
Note that she doesn't say anything about the picture of a certification on Obama's site, nor does she say whether she even saw what they have on file. From her quote, it sounds more likely that she never saw anything they have on file: she only references the health director (Chiyome Fukino) viewing the certificate. Note that in her quote Lingle also lies: neither of the Fukino statements (as above: first, second) say anything about which hospital he was born in, and in fact there have been conflicting claims about the hospital. (Note also that it's correct to term what Lingle did a "lie" rather than just a "misstatement". She feels no need to correct the record and is consciously allowing a false statement to be promulgated.)

In addition to the lies above, Shannon Travis also says CNN and other news organizations have thoroughly debunked the rumors. In fact, Kitty Pilgrim of CNN lied about the facts of this issue, as discussed at the link.

In addition, Shannon Travis refers to the picture on Obama site as that which is officially called a "certificate of live birth." In fact, the very picture he provides says at the top that it's a "Certification of Live Birth", also known as a "COLB". Whether that's an attempt to mislead or just a mistake isn't known, but there was until recently a difference between the two Hawaiian documents.

Do you want to take the word of someone who lies and can't even get the name of a document correct?