Obama Advises Presidents to Avoid TV and Social Media
Written by SOURCE on September 19, 2019
Noting the potential for “a lot of noise” and judgment clouding, former POTUS Barack Obama advised Wednesday that his successors avoid the pitfalls of television and social media.
Speaking at a San Francisco event hosted by data analysis company Splunk on Wednesday, Obama said a “team with a diversity of opinion” around you is necessary in the Oval Office.
“The other thing that’s helpful is not watching TV or reading social media,” Obama said, per Markets Insider. “Those are two things I would advise, if you’re our president, not to do. It creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment.”
Speaking further on the effects of giving too much attention to opinions that may be “wrapped up as fact” across both mediums, Obama pointed to the potential impact that giving such voices weight may have on a POTUS’ White House decisions.
“What it does mean is that if you are susceptible to worrying about what are the polls saying or what might this person say about this topic, or you start mistaking the intensity of the passion of a very small subset of people with a broader sense about your country or people who know something about the topic, that will sway your decision-making in an unhealthy way,” he added.
While such advice would quite clearly apply to the dingbat of a man currently occupying the White House, former speechwriter Jon Favreau promptly took to the tweets to share his opinion that Obama wasn’t taking “a swipe” at that dingbat in question.
Earlier this week, Obama met with 16-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg to discuss climate change action:
