MOSCOW (Sputnik) — US President Barack Obama admitted Monday his administration's failure to adequately inform the public about the work it is doing to counter the Islamic State (IS, or Daesh in Arabic) jihadist group, an interview given by the president revealed.
"I think that there is a legitimate criticism of what I've been doing and our administration has been doing in the sense that we haven't, you know, on a regular basis I think described all the work that we've been doing for more than a year now to defeat ISIL," Obama told National Public Radio.
US media, on the other hand, has fueled the public's fear of terrorism, Obama said, addressing the reasons for the low approval ratings of his administration's anti-IS strategy.
Obama's approval rating fell in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, according to recent polls. The president's approval rating dropped to 46 percent around November 16-19, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll, while his disapproval rating rose to 50 percent. An early December NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that Obama's job approval rating had slipped further to just 43 percent.
The United States has been conducting strikes targeting Daesh in Syria and Iraq since 2014. Daesh is an extremist jihadist organization, banned in many countries, including Russia.
