President Barack Obama may have yet to formally support any candidate, but he certainly has been vocal during the primary season, issuing statements about the primary's recent developments. Now he has come back once again, this time with a new message: for journalists to hold candidates - and themselves by proxy - to higher standards.
Obama's latest statements came Monday evening at the presentation of the Toner Prize, named for Robin Toner, the first woman to be national political correspondent for The New York Times. During her 25-year tenure, she covered five presidential elections. Obama was a frequent topic of hers during his campaign, but she died shortly after he was elected in 2008.
He decried the current state of the primary, citing the "divisive and vulgar rhetoric" that's been used as of late.
"I know I'm not the only one who may be more than a little dismayed about what's happening on the campaign trail right now -- the divisive and often vulgar rhetoric that's aimed at everybody but often is focused on the vulnerable or women or minorities," he said.
In Obama's case, it's more of the same. He has delivered many speeches as of late where he questioned the direction that politics in the U.S. are headed. This was his very theme when he addressed the Illinois state legislature several weeks ago.
"As I go into my last year, I spend a lot of time reflecting on how this system - how this crazy notion of self government works," he said. "How can we make it work? And this is as important to making it work as anything. People getting information that they can trust and that has substance and truth and facts behind it."
Obama continued to say that the current political atmosphere isn't anyone's fault in particular, as everyone has had a hand in derailing it.
"It's worth asking ourselves what each of us - as politicians, as journalists, but most of all as citizens - may have done" to create the polarized political atmosphere, Obama said. "Some may be more to blame than others for the current climate, but all of us are responsible for reversing it."
He noted that it's a reporter's job to take politicians to task when they issue promises they can't keep and not simply hand them a microphone so they can be heard. Without saying his name explicitly, he called out tactics used by Donald Trump throughout the entirety of his campaign.
"A job well done is about more than just handing someone a microphone. It's to probe and to question and to dig deeper and to demand more," the president continued. "The electorate would be better served if that happened. It would be better served if billions of dollars in free media came with serious accountability, especially when politicians issue unworkable plans or make promises they cannot keep."
In light of this, Obama called on the broadcast networks and producers to give reporters room to follow their instincts and dig deeper as they're the ones in the position to set everything straight.
All in all, Obama admitted the allure of giving the public softer stories to digest, but in the end it leads to them not understanding the world at large which only serves as a detriment to our country. "Real people depend on you to uncover the truth," he said.
