It's not that, as Obama says, "...we don't share a common baseline of facts." It's that the interpretation of those facts as baked and sliced for us by experts differs.
For Example:
When Obama said "If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than if you are listening to NPR." In that sentence (disregarding the verb disagreement) "watch[ing] Fox News" is equal to "listening to NPR" and those two phrases can be interchanged.
The same meaning can be applied to the sentence, "If you listen to NPR, you are living on a different planet than if you are watching Fox News."
Given the audience reaction to the original statement, the second one would have been preferable, due to the removal (or at least the delay) of the hate Fox opportunity the first one (unwittingly?) presented.
Another example of the equity balance of the sentence is "If you walk on Mars, you are living on another planet than if you are walking on Venus." Totally interchangeable places.
If Obama wanted to take a swipe at Fox News, as has been reported, this comment fails to do so. It places Fox directly opposite NPR in orbit around the interpretation of facts.
The misleading reporting of this simple statement of Obama's is a result of many aspects of the polarity of news narratives, positions, biases, and viewers. but these two are salient:
It is assumed that Obama was aiming at Fox News, because he has done that in the past, and it is generally accepted that Fox is conservative and NPR is liberal. By extrapolating these opinions, to all phases of discourse between news outlets, the error becomes instinctive.
As somewhat poetic in its implications as a practical example of what it was actually saying, the experts would rather use this simple statement as cannon fodder for the mistaken belief that we are more divided that ever.
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