During an interview on CBS Mornings, former President Barack Obama expressed that his primary concern for the future of the United States is the presence of a polarized media landscape.
In response to host Nate Burleson’s question about his worries for the country after his presidency, Obama emphasized the issue of a fragmented discourse, attributing it partly to the existence of a divided media.
“When I was coming up, you had three TV stations. And people were getting a similar sense of what is true and what isn’t, what was real and what was not. Today, I’m most concerned about the fact that because of the splintering of the media, we almost occupy different realities,” said Obama.
Obama said with the changing times, there has been a notable shift from a shared understanding where even with disagreements on solutions, everyone acknowledged the existence of an issue to a situation where people may dismiss or deny the occurrence altogether.
“One of the goals of the Obama Foundation and one of the goals of my post-presidency is, how do we return to that common conversation? How can we have a common set of facts,” he said. “We may disagree on gun violence in terms of what the best prescriptions are, but we can’t deny the data that says the United States has levels of gun violence that are five, ten, fifteen times more than other countries.”
Obama suggested that reducing the issue to a mere mental health problem overlooks mental health challenges in other countries. He highlighted that the distinction lies in something else, which can be a topic of debate. Nevertheless, he emphasized acknowledging these shared facts as a basis for a meaningful discussion.
