WASHINGTON – First lady Laura Bush (search) thinks the news media is increasingly filled with opinions instead of facts, and suggested Tuesday that journalists are contributing to the polarization of the country.
"I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America," she said in an interview Tuesday with Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" (search).
"I think that a lot of times the media sensationalize or magnify things that aren't — that really shouldn't be," she said.
"I do think there's a big move away from actual reporting, trying to report facts," the first lady said. "It's in newspapers and everything you read — that a lot more is opinion."
When her interviewer suggested that journalists were out of sync with most of the country, she said with a laugh: "You just gave me a really great idea. Maybe it is the media that has us divided."
President Bush's (search) mother had famously bitter relations with the news media during his father's term in office.
After the 1992 election, as Barbara Bush gave Hillary Rodham Clinton a tour of the White House she pointed to nearby reporters and told her successor: "Avoid this crowd like the plague."
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