April 27, 2011: Journalist: Obama Chose to Release Birth Certificate to End Media Fascination with ‘Birther’ Controversy

Journalist and author David Corn examines the media’s reaction to President Obama’s release of his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011), writing that Washington reporters were, from the time just before Obama’s press briefing to the period of intensive coverage and analysis immediately following, alternating between expressing incredulity that Obama would spend time on such a “minor” issue and, in Corn’s words, “jumping up and down in anticipation.” Obama made the decision in large part to put an end to the endless media coverage going to the “birther” controversy that he feels would be better spent on analyzing and covering the discussions about the nation’s budget woes. In his brief address regarding the release of the document, Obama says: “[T]wo weeks ago, when the Republican House had put forward a budget that will have huge consequences potentially to the country, and when I gave a speech about my budget and how I felt that we needed to invest in education and infrastructure and making sure that we had a strong safety net for our seniors even as we were closing the deficit, during that entire week the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we’re going to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.” The entire controversy is a “distraction,” he says, that needs to stop soaking up huge amounts of media coverage. In the moments before the press briefing, Obama commented on a “break-in” by NBC political reporter Chuck Todd to that network’s normal broadcast schedule: “I was just back there listening to Chuck—he was saying, it’s amazing that he’s not going to be talking about national security. I would not have the networks breaking in if I was talking about that, Chuck, and you know it.” Corn writes, “Ending the birther conspiracy allowed him to nudge the political media and demonstrate he’s the mature leader in town.” Obama wanted to deliver the message himself, Corn writes: “He wanted to come to the podium and take point on the birther rebuttal, using the occasion to address that larger problem and to demonstrate his own desire to rise above political pettiness in order to make Washington work for the citizenry. So rather than just release the records and allow the cable chatterers to chew up the material (and bash [billionaire ‘birther’ enthusiast Donald] Trump), the White House deployed the president to throw the knock-out punch, realizing that it had a much better chance to cut through the clutter if he was the messenger.” Corn concludes with a rhetorical question: “[C]an [Obama] turn the end of birtherism into a teachable moment? That may well depend on how the media covers it.” [Mother Jones, 4/27/2011]