Obama: To Avoid Fake News, Stay Away From Talk Radio

Obama Press Conference Friday

It’s no wonder that voters fell for “fake news” planted by foreign governments during the election when partisan media outlets and political talk radio shows have been pushing a similar tone for years, President Barack Obama said on Friday.

According to McClatchyDC.com, the president slammed these organizations, which he called “domestic propagandists,” for going so far in their efforts to discredit the other side that they make voters vulnerable to fake news meant to undermine the U.S. electoral system.

“If fake news that’s being released by some foreign government is almost identical to reports that are being issued through partisan news venues, then it’s not surprising that that foreign propaganda will have a greater effect,” he said in his last press conference of the year at the White House on Friday during his news conference.

“It doesn’t seem that far-fetched compared to some of the other stuff that folks are hearing from domestic propagandists.”

Voters “who have been getting that stuff every day from talk radio” will find fake news stories convincing as long as the political debate continues to be so heatedly partisan, Obama said.

“We have learned lessons about how internet propaganda from foreign countries can be released into the political bloodstream,” Obama said.

Obama on Friday blamed partisan outlets for enabling foreign intervention by spreading their very message: that when it comes to the government “everything is under suspicion, and everybody is corrupt, and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons, and all of our institutions are full of malevolent actors.”