Obama slams media tycoon Rupert Murdoch for polarizing Western society

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Former US President Barack Obama said Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch was greatly responsible for the division in Western society and its "polarization", The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

In an address to thousands of people at Australia's Aware Super Theatre in Sydney, Obama shared his view about further global political developments. He recalled his first senate elections in 2004 and how the media discourse has changed since then.

“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,” Obama said. “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," the former President said in reference to Media giant Rupert Murdoch.

“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.”

Obama lamented a rise in people only consuming media they felt they were ideologically aligned with – including on the progressive side.

The former President also warned against consuming news from one source, stating that the media's business model now is based on audience attraction, which, in turn, is eliminating space for shared opinions.

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“It’s now a wild west and a splintering of media. And if all you’re doing is, in America it’s Fox News, here I guess it’s Sky, whatever it is, if all you’re doing is watching one source of news, and by the way, in America, you’re seeing that progressives say, well we’re going to have our own news and our own perspective," he 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," the President added.

He also expressed concern that attention-based media might gain more ground and popularity with the fast development of AI and deepfake software.

“Today you can have me in just about any setting on a video, and certainly on a recording, say anything. And unless you’re [my wife] Michelle, you’re pretty confident it’s me,” Obama said. 

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“It sounds funny, and it’s a boon for filmmakers and special effects. But we’re already in a place now where verifying what’s true [is difficult] and the ability to manipulate reality is advancing very quickly and in malevolent hands that contributes to all kinds of polarization."

Obama considers that China took advantage of gaps in international laws that emerged after his term ended. During his term, the former President said he focused efforts to engage closely with “countries in the [south-east Asia] region that didn’t want to have to choose between the US and China but didn’t want to be bullied by China”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping had since “decided that to consolidate power inside of China, he would engage in a much more nationalistic strategy and crack down on some of the liberties that had begun to emerge inside of China," Obama claimed.

“Externally, frankly, with my successor coming in, I think he saw an opportunity because the US president didn’t seem to care that much about the rules-based international system," he said, in reference to former president Donald Trump.

“Taiwan is going to be a potential fault line, and I’m hoping that [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] is paying attention to the massive strategic error that Russia just made with respect to Ukraine and that gives him some pause.”

“What I would say today is that we do have a significantly strained relationship. I think China feels as if it does not have to operate under the same constraints that it did while I was president," he considered.

“Those tensions, I don’t think, are going to go away anytime soon.”

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Commenting on Russia's war with Ukraine, he said that “the broader contest that is taking place around the world between … an ancient way of conceiving of power that is essentially determined by violence and coercion and might-makes-right and is about domination and subordination and taking what you can, and a more modern notion of nation states respecting each other regardless of size and rule of law.”

“For most of human history, you have the bigger club, you beat the other guy over the head and you take what you want. And that operated for a long time, everywhere, in Europe and in Asia and in Africa and the Middle East and Latin America."

He considered that the war in Ukraine represents "in some ways the exhaustion, the futility of the old ways of doing business in this modern world. Because there are too many people who have seen what freedom tastes like and understand what genuine democracy can mean."

“I don’t want people to think that if Putin fails, that we’ve won, because I think that what Putin represents, the trends that his politics and authoritarianism and dissembling and lying and cruelty and manipulation and repression, what he represents is bubbling up everywhere, including in my own country. And we have to watch out for that,” Obama concluded.