Former President Barack Obama lamented the diminishing importance of the mainstream media as “the curators and the gatekeepers for what’s acceptable and what’s not,” blaming in part “a particular paranoia among some segment of that conservative population,” which led to the rise of the conservative media ecosystem.

Obama made his comments during an interview with Oprah Winfrey on AppleTV+ about his latest memoir, “A Promised Land.”

“Part of what I write about is the degree to which the media changes in a way that I did not fully anticipate,” Obama told Winfrey. “You couldn’t even see it, but it started just as I’m getting elected the importance of mainstream, the old network. Walter Cronkite, the Nightly News, New York Times, Washington Post, them being sort of the curators and the gatekeepers for what’s acceptable and what’s not.

“That starts to break down, and the media suddenly scatters in a million different pieces, and then you get social media and people are just absorbing whatever stories they’re telling in a way that’s unchallenged,” he added.
Obama said that creates division and in some cases, ten separate realities in which conspiracy theories and rumors are allowed to fester and are believed by millions of people.

Don Irvine serves as the Publisher for Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts. View the complete archives from Don Irvine.

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