Murdoch's media empire helped to sow division in society, Obama says

Barack Obama has suggested Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has led to greater polarisation in western societies through news coverage designed to make people angry and resentful”.

- Elias Visontay

Speaking to a crowd of 9,000 people at the Aware Super Theatre in Sydney on Tuesday, the former US president mixed childhood memories of transiting through Australia as a child with pointed observations about the current political discourse and the rise of China.

Asked by the moderator, the former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop, about the history of bipartisanship in the US political system, Obama reflected on the largely Anglo-American male makeup of senators and representatives at the time he was elected to the US Senate in 2004, and on the divisions that have persisted since.

“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 to laughter. And that’s true within the Republicans. 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...

“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.