A top officer for National Public Radio has confirmed that many Americans still question whether Barack Obama is eligible to be president but admits that the tax-supported organization isn't reporting on it.

It was Betsy Liley, NPR's senior director of institutional giving, who was meeting with another NPR executive, senior Vice President Ron Schiller, when an undercover recorder was running.

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In the recording, the two executives discuss how a donor wanted to contribute to coverage of climate change, but only if just one side of the story – the side promoting man-made climate change as fact – is reported.

Liley calls it "complicated."

"There's a political question, and there is a scientific question, and we were talking to him about supporting the science desk. And so we've gone back to the science editor and asked how have you planned to cover this?"

She said the science desk appears to cover climate change as established science but noted that the political desk in Washington may move into other areas.

"So it's more complicated than saying, 'Where was Obama born? In Hawaii or not? Is he an American citizen or not?'" she explains.

"There's still a question about whether he is and that is a fact," she said. "But I think the challenge in our society now is questioning facts. It's not opinions that we're debating. It's what are the facts? Is the world flat? I mean is that the next question we're going to debate?"

As the Washington Times put it, Liley spilled "the birther beans during an undercover sting."

"We're not covering the birthers. We are not covering them," Liley said. "There's a whole movement within the conservative group about questioning something that Obama has said as fact, 'I was born in Hawaii, when it was a United States state.' The group that questions this, some of whom are commentators ... I don't know any who are Democrats, but they are primarily conservative commentators and people who follow them question if Obama is [a natural-born citizen]."

Liley also cites a "stunning" study revealing that "51 percent of Americans now believe that Obama was not born in the United States."

WND has reported on multiple legal challenges to Obama over his status as a natural-born citizen. The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether Obama actually was born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Still others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question what passport he used to travel to Pakistan three decades ago.

Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers as well as his appointment of a team of lawyers to defend against all requests for release of his documentation.

Others who have raised questions include Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Chris Mathews, Laura Ingraham and a long list of media and political personalities.

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