Obama's book tour doubles as a warning about 'deeply divided' media landscape

By Brian Stelter, CNN Business

Updated 0514 GMT (1314 HKT) November 16, 2020

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US President Donald Trump (L) listens to White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas speak during a
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at the White House June 14, 2017 in Washington, DC. Trump announced that the suspected gunman,
66-year-old James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, was killed in the attack. (Photo by Chip
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US President Donald Trump (L) listens to White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas speak during a
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Washington, DC. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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(CNN Business)A version of this article first appeared in the "Reliable Sources" newsletter. You can sign
up for free right here.

When Barack Obama and his editors at Penguin Random House's Crown Publishing picked this week to
publish the first volume of his memoirs, "A Promised Land," they hoped that the election results would
be clear, that Obama's vice president Joe Biden would be busy with transition work, and that there
wouldn't be any widespread unrest.

They turned out to be right on all three counts: Tuesday is a wide-open launchpad for Obama's book,
which is expected to be the best-selling title of the year, just as Michelle Obama's "Becoming" was in
2018.

But they also expected that Obama and the memoir would be competing for attention with President
Trump, and that's true too. Trump is continuing to thrash around on Twitter, saying "I concede nothing"
and spreading lies about widespread fraud. So Obama's interviews and public appearances are about his
time in office, yes, but they're also about Trump's misconduct, and about whether Biden will be able to
restore any normalcy. Judging from his comments so far, Obama is clearly concerned that the
information universe has changed in ways that are destabilizing to democracy. Let's take a look...

"The single biggest threat to our democracy"

On Monday morning The Atlantic is publishing Jeffrey Goldberg's wide-ranging interview with Obama. In
it, Obama talks about the "common narrative" provided by past anchors like Walter Cronkite, back when
broadcast towers and printing presses limited who could be heard and when.

"I come out of this book very worried about the degree to which we do not have a common baseline of
fact and a common story," he told Goldberg. "We don't have a Walter Cronkite describing the tragedy of
Kennedy's assassination but also saying to supporters and detractors alike of the Vietnam War that this
is not going the way the generals and the White House are telling us. Without this common narrative
democracy becomes very tough."

Later in the interview, Goldberg asked, "Is this new malevolent information architecture bending the
moral arc away from justice?"
"I think it is the single biggest threat to our democracy," Obama said. "I think Donald Trump is a creature
of this, but he did not create it. He may be an accelerant of it, but it preceded him and will outlast him. I
am deeply troubled by how we address it."

The genie is gone

In the interview, Obama exhibited his familiarity with nightmares like QAnon and a realist attitude
toward the near-future. "You can't put the genie back in the bottle," he told Goldberg. "You're not going
to eliminate the internet, you're not going to eliminate the thousand stations on the air with niche
viewerships designed for every political preference. Without this it becomes very difficult for us to tackle
big things. It becomes hard for us to say, 'Hey, we have a pandemic here, it's deadly; it's serious; let's put
partisanship aside; let's listen to Anthony Fauci because he's been studying stuff like this for a long time.
We may not get everything exactly right, because science works iteratively, but let's hew as closely as
we can to the science. Let's do what science tells us to do to save lives.' That becomes harder to do."

The interview is available on TheAtlantic.com...

Obama's other interviews

His sit-down with Gayle King aired on "CBS Sunday Morning." She asked, "Seventy-two million people
voted for Donald Trump. What does that say to you about the state of this country?"

"Well, what it says is that we are still deeply divided," Obama said. "The power of that alternative
worldview that's presented in the media that those voters consume, it carries a lot of weight."

The media also came up repeatedly in Obama's interview with Scott Pelley on "60 Minutes." This quote
stood out: "I think we're going to have to work with the media and with the tech companies to find ways
to inform the public better about the issues and to -- bolster the standards that ensure we can separate
truth from fiction. I think that we have to work at a local level." He's right that the local level is "where
we have to start in terms of rebuilding the social trust we need for democracy to work."

>> Coming up: Obama's next interview is with NPR's Michel Martin... Excerpts will air throughout the
day on Monday...

>> Oprah Winfrey's conversation with the former POTUS will come out on Apple TV+ on Tuesday...

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