In a newly released interview, former President Barack Obama called out Fox News for what amounts to their flagrant disregard for the truth. As he put it, Fox News viewers “perceive a different reality” than the perceptions of current circumstances that are generally held by those who do not watch Fox News. Routinely, Fox hypes up stories that, in reality, barely have any substantive relevance outside of their conservative echo chamber, but the network uses the nonsense as fuel for their destructive outrage machine anyway.
In a discussion with an outlet called The 19th, Obama commented as follows:
‘Look, there’s no doubt that the country is deeply divided right now — more divided than when I first ran for president in 2008. America has been fractured by a combination of political, cultural, ideological and geographical divisions that seem to be deeper than just differences in policy. I think a lot of that has to do with changes in how people get information. I’ve spoken about this before, but if you watch Fox News, you perceive a different reality than if you read The New York Times. And those differences have been amplified by social media, which allows people to live in bubbles with other people who think like them.’
Those divides have, of course also been amplified by leaders in the Republican Party who either provide space for or actively promote false claims like former President Donald Trump’s lie that last year’s presidential election was somehow rigged for Joe Biden, an assertion for which no supporting evidence has ever emerged.
Although Obama called out the propagation of sets of so-called facts that differ from actual reality, he also provided a vision for the path ahead. As he put it, Americans “need to push our institutions in the direction of addressing these challenges.” He observed as follows:
‘Until we can agree on a common set of facts, until we can distinguish between what’s true and what’s false, then the marketplace of ideas won’t work. Our democracy won’t work. So, as citizens, we need to push our institutions in the direction of addressing these challenges. But if anyone can help bridge our divides, it’s Joe Biden. He’s spent his life bringing people together. And as president, he’s been focused on beating back the pandemic and rebuilding our economy — ideas that Americans from both parties can support.’
Biden has so far enjoyed comparatively high levels of approval from the general public. A recent HarrisX survey found that 61 percent of overall respondents said that they approve of Biden’s job performance as president — which suggests that Democrats could fare well in the upcoming midterm elections.
