Facts vs Opinions

 Audrey Grone 

ag382717@ohio.edu 

Many people feel very strongly about their opinions and beliefs. Some people do not want to hear what others have to say and do not have the respect to disagree. During my college years and also a little towards the end of my high school career I remember teachers saying "Instead of saying your opinion, but the facts". That has stuck with me because if someone wanted to read your opinion they would read blogs, such as this one. Not journalism articles looking for news that is covered with the journalist's opinions. 

This can also get messy and unethical for a journalist. To be a credible journalist you need hard evidence and facts to have a good report/ message. According to The Hill, "More and more in American journalism, we're hearing opinions in the news that look and sound more like a "Dear Diary" entry than the facts of a story. This is fueling mistrust from readers and viewers just looking find out what happened without being preached to" (Concha). Many people are not watching the news because they feel as if they are just watching a talk show and hearing the opinions of the news anchors. I know my family doesn't watch certain channels because it is all opinion-based and what they want to talk about.  

  Image by Scientific American website 

People watching the news, reading articles, or a newspaper do not know what to believe and with social media, anyone can post anything at any time. People are confused and half the time I don't know what to believe and I don't know what's true or not. According to  GFC Global  "A Pew Research Study created five factual statements and five opinion statements and then asked people to identify which was which. Out of 5,000 adults, only 35% correctly identified all five opinions statements, while only 26% identified all five factual statements" (GFC Global). People cling to one news source and that's the one they stick with and only believe what they are saying when they need to have more than one resource to fact check. I for one could also do this. 

I'm not sure if this adds to the problem or if it makes it worse, but there are so many different ways to get information now and days. Different news channels, newspapers, social media, magazines, blog posts, word of mouth, etc. According to American Press Institute, they claim "Only 43 percent of people say they could easily sort news from opinion on these news websites or social platforms, which are likely where most frequent mixing of different kinds of content occurs. These digital environments tend to present all forms of content identically" (American Press Institute). Also, the article brought up a great point that many people do not know what "op-ed" is, and I didn't until I read the article. 

Bottom line, people including myself need to be more educated on what they're reading and checking more than one source.