President Obama and Prince Harry sat down for a 39-minute interview with BBC Channel 4 that aired today.
Obama warned of the dangers that internet has handed to some who use it to reinforce alternative realities — ahem.
Without mentioning the current Tweeter-in-Chief by name, Obama said in response to a question about social media, “One of the dangers of the internet is that people can have entirely different realities. They can be just cocooned in information that reinforces their current biases.”
A firm supporter of the First Amendment, Obama said, “The question I think really has to do with how do we harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views, but doesn't lead to a balkanization of our society, but rather continues to promote ways of finding common ground… All of us in leadership have to find ways in which we can recreate a common space on the internet. It used to be, in the United states for example, we had three television stations and everybody watched Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or whoever the chief anchor was. Everybody had a common set of facts, and so there might be conservatives and liberals, but people could generally agree on a baseline of reality.”
Listen HERE or at the top of the post if it's still available.
Harry also engaged Obama in a rapid fire round of questions about pop culture and personal issues:
