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Barack Obama slams Fox News for its coverage: ‘Making people angry, resentful'
Barack Obama News: Former US president Barack Obama said, “You no longer have a joint conversation and a shared story."
Former US president Barack Obama said that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has resulted in greater polarisation as the group's news coverage makes “people angry and resentful”. Speaking at Sydney’s Aware Super Theatre, Barack Obama said, “Here’s the good news about the US, though. We’re not quite as polarised as we seem. 60 to 65% of the country, let’s call it 70%, does occupy a reality-based world. And that’s true within the Republicans.”
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“There’s one other factor that’s led to this polarisation. This is global, this is not unique to the United States, and that is the shifts in the media and the story that is told to people. And there’s a guy you may be familiar with, first name Rupert, who was responsible for a lot of this," he added.
“But really he perfected what is a broader trend, which is the advent of cable [television], talk radio and then social media. The dissolution of the monopoly of a few arbiters of the news and journalistic standards that came out of the post-world war two era," the former president went on to say.
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Lamenting on media coverage of political issues, Barack Obama said, “You no longer have a joint conversation and a shared story. And the economics of the media, the clicks, are now based on how do I attract your attention? Well, the easiest way to attract attention without having to have a lot of imagination, thought, or interesting things to say, is just to make people angry and resentful and to make them feel as if somebody’s trying to mess with them and take what’s rightfully theirs."
