Media's Birth Certificate Hypocrisy

Jeffrey Kuhner has a spot on column in the Washington Times discussing the media's hypocrisy on Obama's natural born citizenship status after the media actually took time out to research Mitt Romney's natural born status despite his birth in the state of Michigan to two U.S. citizens because Mitt Romney's father just happened to be born in Mexico to U.S. citizen parents, an issue that drove him out of the 1968 presidential race on grounds that he did not qualify as a natural born citizen eligible to serve as President of the United States. Kuhner talks about the plethora of evidence that the media chooses to ignore that caused even the media to once believe that Obama had been born in Kenya:

Take the birth certificate issue. Conservatives who question the origin of Mr. Obama’s birthplace are derided as “birthers” — extremist kooks, who supposedly wallow in conspiracy theories. Yet, when “mainstream” media outlets, such as Reuters, insist on getting a copy of Mr. Romney’s birth certificate, it is considered objective, hard-hitting reporting. The hypocrisy and double standards are shameful.

Moreover, there is only one person to blame for the prolonged birth certificate issue: Mr. Obama. Like a chameleon, he has repeatedly altered his identity to suit his immediate self-interest. For years, his literary agent claimed — in brochures, press releases and public statements — that Mr. Obama was “born in Kenya.” He never once corrected the record. The reason is obvious: Portraying himself as having exotic Kenyan roots bolstered his literary credentials among trendy multicultural leftists. In 2004, during his campaign for the U.S. Senate, press reports — including from the Associated Press — claimed that Mr. Obama’s birthplace was Kenya.

The issue has plagued him even after winning the White House. In 2009, the government of Kenya announced that it was planning to build a monument to Mr. Obama at the Kenyan site it says is his birthplace. Officials in Kenya’s parliament insist Mr. Obama was born there; so have multiple articles in Kenyan newspapers. Kenyan family members also allege that Mr. Obama was not born on U.S. soil. Instead of addressing the issue immediately and forthrightly, the Obama administration spent millions of dollars in the courts to prevent his birth certificate from being unsealed. Only when real estate mogul Donald Trump cast a spotlight on the issue did Team Obama finally relent. No wonder millions of Americans believe the president is being less than truthful. At the very least, he is a charlatan, who for years helped to perpetrate a massive lie about his background.  

The larger issue, however, is why it took Mr. Trump — and not CNN or the Washington Post or the New York Times — to ask Mr. Obama the obvious question: Where is the original birth certificate? The answer is that the liberal media have become thoroughly corrupt. They no longer care to hold leaders of both parties accountable; rather, they act — and view themselves — as the communications arm of the Democratic Party. In short, their mission is not journalism, but propaganda.