Collective brain for the birthers, WorldNutDaily, has a little transparency problem

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WorldNetDaily won't subject itself to the transparency it demands from Barack Obama regarding his birth certificate

Who signed WND's petition?

WND claims, as of last check, more than 385,000 signatures on a petition "demanding that the constitutional eligibility requirement be taken seriously and that any and all controlling legal authorities in this matter examine the complete birth certificate of Barack Obama, including the actual city and hospital of birth, and make that document available to the American people for inspection." But WND has never disclosed those signatures, has never provided any outside verification of the number of signatures, and has never demonstrated the existence of any mechanism to verify the signatures themselves -- that they belong to voting-age American citizens whose names are not duplicated within the petition (Update: Indeed, one blogger reported signing the petition 44 times). After all, if WND is demanding proof of American citizenship from Obama, shouldn't it be demanding the same of those who sign the petition?

WND and it's defense fund.

In 2006, WND failed to respond to a request by ConWebWatch to disclose the donors to its legal defense fund and an accounting of how that money was spent. This was at a time that WND was fighting a libel lawsuit filed against it by Tennessee businessman Clark Jones -- a lawsuit it settled two years later by admitting that it published false claims about Jones. WND has never explained why it fought Jones' lawsuit for seven years and settled only when the case was set to go to trial, why it made no effort to verify the claims it made about Jones (or any other claim in the multi-part series attacking Al Gore) before publication, or whether it has made an effort to fact-check other claims in that series given the tainted nature of those stories.

Why won't WND pay $10,000 to Sarah Obama?

Farah announced on June 22 that he was offering "a $10,000 reward to anyone who can prove he or she was present at the birth of Barack Obama." So why hasn't he sent one to Sarah Obama?

WND has repeatedly asserted that Sarah Obama, Barack Obama's paternal grandmother, witnessed Barack's birth in Kenya. Even the article touting Farah's reward makes that claim.

If Sarah Obama's claim is good enough for WND news stories, why isn't Jerome Corsi making another trip to Kenya to personally hand over a wad of cash to Sarah Obama? Because, it seems, that Farah has a higher standard of accuracy when his own money (near as we can tell) is on the line as opposed to what's left of WND's journalistic reputation.

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2009/wndobamabirth4.html