Don’t Blame Rick Perry Or Even Trump For Keeping The Birther Controversy Alive. Blame The Media.

The entire first block of Anderson Cooper‘s program last night was devoted to keeping Rick Perry “honest” on his comments, or more accurately non-comments, about President Obama’s birth certificate. The previous night, his 10pm competitor Greta Van Susteren interviewed Donald Trump on his current view of Obama’s birth certificate. Trump (somewhat disingenuously) suggested that they “shouldn’t be talking about it” and even mocked her for posing it as the first question (he then proceeded into la la land with comments like “I am not a fan” and “not a believer” in the validity of it). In fact, in the two weeks before Rick Perry’s interview in Parade Magazine came out, the fake controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate earned barely a mention on cable news. According to the television transcript database TV Eyes, the terms “birther” and “birth certificate” was only mentioned 8 times across all of cable news. But since Friday, the terms “birther” and birth certificate were referenced 180 times; Fox News mentioned both 29 times, CNN 48, and MSNBC led with 103 mentions.

Opinion writers like Dana Milbank in The Washington Post used the opportunity to appeal to their bases with a slam dunk on Perry from what was effectively a rhetorical alley-oop pass. Many blogs (including this one) have been awash in attacks on Perry for his refusal to definitively say that he believes Obama’s birth certificate is real. Lets be clear, he didn’t bring up the issue, the media did. Now they –we— are taking his casual, even lighthearted comments and treating them far more seriously than he, or anyone else ought to be.

Lets start by agreeing that reasonable people now consider this to be beyond a silly issue. President Obama is a U.S. citizen with a valid birth certificate. Done. So then why are members of the media, not the Republican candidates, still spending so much time on it? Well, because its a classic, easily digestible controversy that is, in the end, the media’s lifeblood.

Let start with the origin of the controversy, the Parade Magazine interview published Sunday:

Q. Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
A. I have no reason to think otherwise.

Q. That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—

A. Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

Q. But you’ve seen his.

A. I don’t know. Have I?

Q. You don’t believe what’s been released?

A. I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

Q. And?

A. That came up.

Q. And he said?

A. He doesn’t think it’s real.

Q. And you said?

A. I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the president of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

So the reporter, not Perry, raised the issue which, of course, can be a reporter’s duty on important issues candidates are reluctant to discuss. But why shouldn’t Perry’s response that he “has no reason to think otherwise” and that its “a distractive issue” basically end the issue? The reporter rightly saw a potential gotcha moment and so she followed up on it, at which point Perry turned to a somewhat lame effort at humor. More important, so many in the the rest of the media made it into THE issue from the interview. Then, yesterday, John Harwood of CNBC conducted a thorough and wide ranging interview with Perry about taxes and the economy and concluded with the only soundbite any of the media seemed truly interested in:

JOHN HARWOOD: Mitt Romney after the President released his birth certificate earlier this year said that issue’s done and settled, I accept it. You chose to keep it alive in your interview with Parade magazine over the weekend. Why’d you do that?

RICK PERRY: I– it’s a good issue to keep alive. Just– you know, Donald’s got to have some fun. So– and the issue is this.

JOHN HARWOOD: But it sounds like you really do have some doubt about it.

RICK PERRY: Well, look, I haven’t– I haven’t seen his– I haven’t seen his grades. My grades ended up on the front page of the newspaper. So, let’s– you know, if we’re going to show stuff, let’s show stuff. So. But, look, that’s all a distraction. I mean, I get it. I’m– I’m really not worried about the President’s birth certificate. It’s fun to– to poke and add him a little bit and say hey, how about– let’s see your grades and your birth certificate.

He says he is not worried about the President’s birth certificate but the media sure seems to be. Of course Perry ought to have ended the matter with a straightforward and definitive answer that the President is a US citizen, which he now seems to have finally done. But in both interviews he chose instead to make light of the question with references to Trump, Obama seeing his birth certificate etc. Is it a great or even appropriate joke? No. Is he intentionally avoiding a direct response to avoid upsetting some of the most conspiratorial of his supporters? Maybe. Regardless, the mainstream media in particular, has an obligation to stop the cycle of speculation. Instead, they are fueling it.

Affording these comments the sort of attention that ought to be reserved for important issues like the economy or national security, while Perry seems to laugh the subject off, makes the media appear petty, humorless and a bit ridiculous (by the way the reference to Obama showing his grades is a more serious and legitimate issue to raise with Perry than the birth certificate). By constantly revisiting the birther issue, the media not Perry, affords this non-issue the sort of credibility it never deserved. A CNN reporter later followed up asking what it will take to “convince” Perry “that the President was born in this country?” At this point, Perry was right to avoid continuing the “distraction” by shooting down the reporter’s question.

In his “keeping them honest” segment last night Anderson Cooper claimed “its a distraction that the Governor himself revived for no apparent reason.” No, Perry didn’t revive it. Cooper and the rest of the media did. Sure, Perry didn’t help the situation, but it’s time for those who find it so outrageous to start taking the lead from Perry and even Trump and accept that, at this point, it is just a “distractive issue.”

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.