Saturday, December 17, 2016

Obama Rips Press Over Election Coverage

President Obama rebuked the media on Friday for its coverage of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, saying she was not "treated fairly." reports The Hill.

“I’ve said before that I couldn’t be prouder of Secretary Clinton, her outstanding service,” the president said during his year-end press conference at the White House. “I think she has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people, and I don’t think she was treated fairly during the election. I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling.”

Earlier in the briefing, Obama addressed the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Clinton campaign's manager. Those emails were released by WikiLeaks and received heavy media coverage during the campaign.
The president chided the press for not covering the publication of the stolen emails as an assault on national security, given the intelligence community's assessment that Russia carried out those hacks.

The CIA and FBI reportedly agree that Russia hacked Democratic computer systems in an attempt to influence the presidential election in favor of President-elect Donald Trump.

According to Variety, Obama spent a good deal of his press conference lamenting the “dysfunctional” state of political discourse, including the hyper-partisanship that has seen many accept even fake news at face value as long as it validates their beliefs.

He criticized Republicans who accepted Trump’s praise of Russian president Vladimir Putin even though the party has traditionally supported sanctions because of Putin’s actions. His point was that partisanship had gotten to a point where people are willing to abandon principles if that means their preferred party is in power.

No comments:

Post a Comment