"Our job is not to cover just things that we know to be true." CNN's John King
So if I convinced enough people that John King was an animatronic douchebot from the planet Asshelmet VI, CNN would allow that debate on its network?
Seriously, the press is obligated by (rapidly diminishing) ethical standards to report the truth. Not to give proven liars twelve minutes of airtime -- as King did with Orly Taitz the other day.
The only reason John King should talk about Birthers is to utterly disprove them. If not, he should ignore it. But instead, he hosted a "both sides" debate as though the issue was unresolved and required a continued hashing-out.
Birthers aren't a "side of a story." Why? Because the president's citizenship only has one side: the empirical reality that he was born in Hawaii. Fact. End of story. There's no "other side." Orly Taitz might as well be speaking in tongues with an occasional racial epithet thrown in there. She's just that full of shit. I suspect CNN will next host a raving street tweaker who yells gibberish into a payphone. Just as long as there's a second raving street tweaker to oppose the other tweaker's gibberish.