About Those Birth Announcements …

In a recent on-air debate with Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly claimed that Barack Obama’s Hawaii birth was proven by birth announcements for Obama in the 1961 Hawaii newspapers. But new evidence shows that the original stories about how the online announcement images surfaced were not true. Where they really came from – and who lied about where they came from and why – are questions that O’Reilly might want to research himself, because if the announcements that are on the microfilms now had been in the microfilms at the time the online images surfaced there would have been no need to lie about where they had come from.

The Advertiser Images Are All Identical * In July of 2008 some online images surfaced claiming to be birth announcements for Barack Obama, from the Aug 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser. Lori Starfelt (at Texas Darlin’ Blog) and Whatreallyhappened.com (WRH) both published images that they claim were acquired independently from different locations. (Claims can be seen here) However, the following comparison of those images shows that is highly unlikely, if not impossible (you be the judge). Lori Starfelt’s image. Linked to on July 23, 2008 WRH image, posted on Oct 29, 2008.

Claimed to be from Hawaii State Library microfilm Claimed to be from someone at the Advertiser office

Compare (zoom in as necessary by increasing the % on the PDF taskbar): 1. The right and bottom borders

2. The dotted line directly above Obama’s announcement (blue arrow added for emphasis). 3. The “scratch” directly below the Asing announcement (blue arrow added for emphasis).

* (Note that the part that extended into the left-hand margin is missing from the WRH image. That is the

only difference between the 2 images besides the red arrow that was added)

Starfelt Image (enlarged) WhatReallyHappened image (enlarged) (Red arrow was added by WRH)

4. The “scratch” in the left margin extending into the lower “Luau” ad. (blue arrows for emphasis) (Note

that the line is longer on the WRH image. That’s because the Starfelt image was cropped when it was posted online. Look at the full image and see that the line under “Sunday Advertiser” is also cropped.)

Starfelt Image (enlarged) WRH Image (enlarged)

5. The blurring of lowest line of print in second-left column (blue circles for emphasis).

Starfelt image (enlarged) WRH image (enlarged)

Each microfilm roll would have unique scratches from usage, and different copies from that microfilm will have unique placement within the viewing frame and blurriness/focus. These appear to be the same image, even though one was claimed to be from the Advertiser office and the other claimed to be from the microfilm of the Hawaii State Library.

The Star-Bulletin Images Are All Identical Sometime after the Advertiser images appeared, two anonymous posters each claimed they had gone into the Hawaii State Library and made copies from the microfilm of the Aug 14, 1961 Star-Bulletin – “Koa” at Texas Darlin’ Blog, and a poster at Prius Chat Forum. In addition, Whatreallyhappened.com posted an image received from somebody at the Advertiser office. Koa’s image, linked at post 5066 here: Prius Chat poster’s image, posted here: Claimed to be from the Hawaii State Library microfilm Claimed to be from the Hawaii State Library microfilm

Below: WRH image, claimed to be from someone at Advertiser office

Again, you can enlarge these by increasing the % view on the PDF file, to see the entire context. Circles added for

emphasis. (All images are taken from their original place of posting or

where they are specifically referenced, as documented here. For clarity the images have been saved in a higher-

resolution PNG format. The same comparisons can be made from full-page images on a PDF documenting the source of the images here.)

Notice on these full-page images:

1. The exact same edges on all sides, even though this

is an enlargement and thus harder to make identical.

2. The exact same scratches.

Also compare the circled areas:

3. The exact same hair in the viewer in dead center

Koa’s image Prius Chat image WRH image

4.

5. The exact same arrow drawn on the image.

Koa’s image Prius Chat image WRH image

6. The exact same waviness of the scan edge on left and right edges:

Again, these appear to be the same image, even though the top 2 claimed to be 2 people making independent copies at the Hawaii State Library, and the bottom was from somebody at the Advertiser office.

Where did these images come from? We seem to have just one image of the Star-Bulletin and one image of the Honolulu Advertiser. Did these images come from the Hawaii State Library as the bloggers claimed, the Advertiser office as WRH claimed, or someplace else? In March of 2010 blogger Ladysforest sent a friend to Hawaii and had him make copies from the microfilms at the Hawaii State Library. (Disclaimer: What I’ve posted here are genuine scans of genuine 2nd-generation copies made from the HSL microfilm. “Scratches” that don’t act like scratches when magnified are another story altogether, and one that will hopefully be told eventually.) First let’s compare the Advertiser images: Online Advertiser images (Starfelt and WRH) Genuine Hawaii State Library microfilm copy

The genuine copy on the right is not just a darker copy. Magnify the image to see the number of scratches and how the scratches extend all the way into the left margin rather than neatly starting exactly at the left-most column of print.

Below are enlargements of the blue areas. Notice that even though the genuine copy has many more scratches, the scratch all the way through “Beat the Heat” – the major scratch from the earlier Starfelt copy

– is missing in the genuine copy made in March of 2010. WRH/Starfelt Image:

Genuine Image:

The Starfelt image could not have come from the same Hawaii State Library microfilm as was in the HSL in March of 2010 because a prominent scratch disappeared from the microfilm. In addition, when one researcher asked the Hawaii State Librarian for a copy in late April, 2010 she received this response (emphasis mine):

"As for your request for the Aug. 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser birth announcement page, I looked it up, but unfortunately, the microfilm is so worn down on top of being poorly microfilmed, that it is hardly legible. You might be better off asking another library that has a better, less used copy than ours. Or does it have to be the Advertiser? I checked the Star-Bulletin and that date and that film is fine. Let me know."

If the Aug 13 page was old and poorly microfilmed in April of 2010 then it had been poorly microfilmed all along – if it was the same microfilm. But the online images show no signs of poor microfilming (streaks, blotches, blurriness, etc) Starfelt’s image did not come from the poorly-filmed microfilms the librarian described. It seems impossible, then, that the online Advertiser images came from the Hawaii State Library. Where, then, did Lori Starfelt get her pristine image from, and why was it claimed to be from the Hawaii State Library? That is an important question.

What about the Star-Bulletin image? Here is the online image, followed by the genuine copy made 20 months later: Online image (Koa, Prius Chat poster, WRH): Full-page copy from the Hawaii State Library

The red-circled area is the part that was included in the online images. Notice that this copy also “lost” its prominent scratches over 20 months’ time, if the 2 anonymous posters actually made their copies from the Hawaii State Library’s microfilm as they claimed. The blue-circled area shows some of the 26 extra announcements the Star-Bulletin had, that the Advertiser didn’t. (See enlargement below). We were told the lists for the 2 papers were identical and that this proved that the lists had to be from the Vital Records Office. In reality, the lists were only “identical” in the images because the Star-Bulletin list was cropped to make it appear that way. If identical lists proved the announcements were from the Vital Records Office, would non-identical lists prove they were NOT from the Vital Records Office?)

So then, it also seems impossible that the online Star-Bulletin image came from the Hawaii State Library microfilm. This brings up a multitude of questions – the most important of which are these: Where DID those images come from, and why were they falsely claimed to be from the Hawaii State Library?