President Obama told Britons today that the Internet era makes it difficult to control people's opinions, which is enabling "extreme" political beliefs.
Speaking at a townhall in London, Obama said the "virtue" of the pre-Internet era is the few news stations available ensured everyone held similar opinions.
“I know less about the UK media, but in the United States, it used to be that we had three TV stations," Obama said. "And people might complain about the dominance of these three television stations, but there was one virtue to them which was everybody was kind of watching the same thing and had the same understanding of what the facts were on any given issue."
Obama said the rise of new media re-enforces people's opinions, making it "harder to compromise."
"And today you have like 500 television stations. And the Internet will give you a thousand different sources of information," Obama said. "And so what is increasingly happening in the United States is that if you are conservative then you are watching Fox News, or you’re reading conservative blog posts. If you are a liberal, then you’re reading the Huffington Post, or reading the New York Times. And there’s this massive divergence that’s taking place in terms of just what they’ve agreed upon facts and the assumptions are that we are talking about. And that does make it harder to compromise."
The president blamed the rise of unregulated media for facilitating "extreme" political beliefs.
"There have been some interesting studies that are done showing that if you spend time just with the people who agree with you on any particular issue, that you become even more extreme in your convictions because you are never contradicted and everybody just mutually reinforces their perspective," he told Londoners. "That’s why I think it is so important for all the young people here to seek out people who don’t agree with you. That will teach you to compromise."