President Barack Obama's speeches are usually met with equal parts admiration and criticism but on May 12, it sparked conversation on whether the first Black president of the United States is trying to censor the Fourth Estate. 

Fox News, the very news network that Obama cited in his Georgetown University speech about poverty, reported May 13 that Obama's comments only had the industry's concerns about the federal government "taking an uncomfortable interest" in media reporting. 

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Fox was specifically referring to a bit in Obama's speech where he said that the news network, known for its disfavor of the president, seems to only focus on airing interviews with people who do not really want to work, instead of getting the input of middle-class citizens who are "doing everything right but still can't pay the bills."

Obama also pointed out that he thinks that in the last four decades, there is a campaign to create animosity between different social classes. 

"There's always been a strain in American politics where you've got the middle class, and the question has been, who are you mad at, if you're struggling; if you're working, but you don't seem to be getting ahead... And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leaches, don't want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction," Obama said. 

The president continued that to help solve this aspect of poverty, politics has to change and "how the media reports" should also be altered. 

Joseph Desilets, political consulting firm 21st & Main Managing Director, told Fox News that Obama's remark was "outrageous" and that he does not have the right to instruct the media on how to perform its job. 

Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, commented that Obama blaming the issue of poverty on a news outlet is "completely absurd" and that the real issue is the government's ineffective programs to help the poor. 

"Unless Obama really thinks the media isn't giving the people what he wants ... good luck to him with trying to change the business model," de Rugy added.

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