News Media Takes The “Birther” Issue Seriously — Sometimes.

I’m surprised that the controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s birth certificate continues to draw serious attention, more than two years into his presidency.

And yet, Jerome Corsi’s Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President rose to #1 on the Amazon bestseller list this week. Right or wrong, a lot of people want to hear and read more about this issue.

Donald Trump, considering a possible Presidential run, continues to draw attention to the fact that President Obama has chosen not to release a long-form birth certificate that proves that he was born in Hawaii.

The news media usually dismisses these so-called “birthers” as being on the lunatic fringe, ignoring the story or reporting on it with a wink and a nudge. But they weren’t always so dismissive of questions about constitutional eligibility and presidential birth certificates.

In the spring of 2008, ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all ran stories expressing doubt about Republican candidate John McCain’s eligibility for the Presidency, due to his birth in the Panama Canal Zone.

As Corsi wrote in a 2010 WorldNetDaily article:

Many of the same news organizations and research groups today dismissing concerns about Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility were far more eager to cover the issue when Republican presidential candidate John McCain was the subject.

To paraphrase John Kerry, they were in favor of reporting on the birth issue before they were against it.

I don’t know that a long-form birth certificate would reveal anything controversial about President Obama. On the other hand, I don’t know why he refuses to release it.

But I do know that the news media is handling Democrat Barack Obama’s birth issue much differently than it handled Republican John McCain’s.

Why is that?