George Washington University's Law Professor Jonathan Turley attacked a proposal by former Democrat President Barack Obama for "de facto state media" through his advocacy for an "undivided media" that would avoid any "divided conversation" in a series of tweets.

Turley wrote in a series of tweets that "[a]fter I ran a column on whether we now have a de facto state media, former President Obama seemed to make the case for the value of an 'undivided media' to avoid any 'divided conversation'... Obama told CBS: 'The thing that I’m most worried about is the degree to which we’ve now had a divided conversation, in part because we have a divided media... Actually, we have seen that the far greater danger is an effective state media that shields the government and bars damaging stories. This is not the first time Obama has called for a unified media front to protect citizens from dangerous perspectives."
 

...Actually, we have seen that the far greater danger is an effective state media that shields the government and bars damaging stories. This is not the first time Obama has called for a unified media front to protect citizens from dangerous perspectives. https://t.co/WuhVjol5yi

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 16, 2023

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The interview between CBS and Obama was done earlier this week and it did have Obama using those words. Obama explained in context, "When I was coming up, you had three TV stations. And people were getting a similar sense of what is true and what isn’t, what was real and what was not...Today, what I’m most concerned about is the fact that because of the splintering of the media, we almost occupy different realities." 

The 44th president added that "If something happens that, you know, in the past everybody could say, 'All right, we may disagree on how to solve it, but at least we all agree that, yeah, that's an issue...Now people will say, 'Well, that didn't happen,' or, 'I don't believe that,' or, 'I don't care about the science,' or, 'I'm not concerned about these experts, you know, 'cause they're just all liberals' or, you know, 'That's just conservative propaganda.'"

As Professor Turley correctly observed this is not the first instance of Obama advocating controlling the media that people watch and listen to. 

Both before and during the Trump presidency, Obama was willing to shape media narratives to his liking as most stunningly shown by the release of the Durham report that showed that the former president was briefed in 2016 about the legitimacy of the Clinton campaign's Russia collusion narrative. Despite this, President Obama was willing to go along with the Russia collusion narrative and promote it following Trump's inauguration.