Barack Obama Says ‘Divided Media’ Keeps Him Up at Night

Former President Barack Obama cited America’s “divided media” as his biggest concern for the country going forward.

Speaking with Nate Burelson on CBS, the former president pointed to the increasing number of news outlets as cause for worry — arguing that these outlets often present competing sets of facts to viewers.

“Post-presidency, what about this country keeps you up at night?” Burleson asked Obama.

“The thing that I’m most worried about is the degree to which we’ve now had a divided conversation, in part because we have a divided media,” Obama said. He added, “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, what I’m most concerned about is the fact that because of the splintering of the media, we almost occupy different realities.”

The former president stressed the importance of Americans coming together on “a common set of facts.” He pointed to gun violence as one issue on which Americans have failed to come to a consensus.

“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, 10, 15 times more than other countries,” Obama said. “So if we say that it’s just a mental health problem, well, it’s not like there aren’t more people with mental health problems in those other countries. … Now, we can have a debate, but at least we’ve agreed on something.”

Watch above, via CBS.

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