Telling fact from opinion isn’t easy – just ask the more than 5,000 Americans the Pew Research Center surveyed in 2018 to see if they could tell whether a statement was a fact or an opinion.
They had to consider 10 statements – five factual and five opinion – and determine which category they fit into. Most were able to get three of the five correct in each category, but, as the Pew folks point on in their report on the survey results, that’s only slightly better than if they were all offering guesses.
Only 26 percent of respondents correctly identified all the factual statements, and only 35 percent correctly identified all the opinion statements. Those respondents tended to be more politically aware, digitally savvy and have a high regard for the press.
The least politically aware respondents were far less accurate in their assessments of the statements – only 17 percent of them got all five correct. Further, how much trust a respondent puts in the press also colored their ability to tell fact from opinion.
Of those who place a great deal of trust in the news media, 39 percent correctly identified all the factual statements as factual, and 43 percent correctly identified all of the opinion statements as opinion. (Summary of the report is available here: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between-factual-and-opinion-statements-in-the-news/. A link to the PDF of the full report is available at the top right-hand side of the webpage).
What makes it hard sometimes to tell between facts and opinions is that some assertions come across as statements of fact.
Remember two years ago when Brit Hume on Fox News declared, “I don’t think there’s any doubt (Joe) Biden’s senile.”
Well, here are a few things PolitiFact, a fact checking organization run through the Poynter Institute, found when they whether Hume’s statement was factual. The Poynter institute is training and research center that deals with ethical journalism and democratic ideals.
First, the investigators at PolitiFact were not able to verify Hume’s statement exactly. “Senile” is not a medical term, and the physicians they spoke to were more comfortable talking about dementia, which is a precise medical diagnosis. The physicians said that Biden did not show any signs of having dementia, which they described as “cognitive decline that is severe enough to cause someone to lose the ability to function independently in daily life.”
Those doctors were Kenneth Langa, the Cyrus Sturgis professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, and Donald Jurivich, the Eva Gilbertson Distinguised Professor of Geriatrics and chair of the Geriatrics Department at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
By the same token, a year later, Greg Ganske, a retired plastic surgeon and Iowa representative to Congress, wrote a column in the Augusta 15, 2021 Des Moines Register in which he argued Biden at the very least needed cognitive testing because of the misstatements and malapropisms he was making. He quoted “a neurosurgeon friend” who remembered Biden had surgery for brain aneurysms back in 1988 and had “two intracerebral bleeds” in the past as well.
So, who, in these two examples, offered facts to deal with Biden’s alleged “senility”? The distinction between facts and opinion is this: facts are provably true. Opinion is a statement of someone’s beliefs or values – values being an important consideration in this case.
The two distinguished doctors who specialize in treating the ailments that are specific to the elderly? Or, the plastic surgeon who is also a Republican Congressman, hence has something to gain from following the party line and suggesting that Biden is cognitively impaired? And what criteria can you use to help you determine?
Well, first, the two doctors have strong qualifications within the area of expertise needed to diagnose someone with dementia. They did not have the opportunity to examine Biden, however.
Ganske and his wife, according to his column, did once share a table with Biden and his wife at a congressional gathering, and that was probably only one of many times the two have met. He’s a doctor, too, but he’s a plastic surgeon. They do reconstructive surgery. And, he and Biden are political opponents.
Ganske has something to gain from discrediting Biden. The two doctors have academic and professional reputations to protect. Offering an assessment of Biden’s mental state presents something of a risk for them, for they were speaking based on observation rather than actual examination. If they were proven wrong, at the very least, they’d be in for a good bit of professional ribbing if not loss of reputation.
So, who was making factual statements, and who was making statements of opinion?
Well, Pew would predict your answer will depend on how politically and digitally aware you are, how much you trust news sources and how interested you are in the news.
But, there are some other tools you can use, too. Certain kinds of words offer clues to opinion – words like good, bad, right or wrong can push bias into a statement and, because they imply judgment by the speaker or writer, are clues that you may be reading opinion. Qualifying words also may allow opinion to creep in – words like sometimes, always, never, possibly.
Anytime a speaker is taking a position on a controversy, making predictions or offering evaluations, you are likely going to be encountering opinion.
See how you fare with these examples:
- Looking at the quality of this document, I think the printer was low on toner when it was printed.
- Mr. Lewis meets all the criteria of teaching excellence – which is obvious because he won the teacher of the year award.
- Objectivity is an unobtainable journalistic value. Fairness is as close as anyone can get.
- Sunset today will be at 7:55 p.m.
- In terms of area, Asia is the largest continent.
- The government should increase spending to support teens who become pregnant.
- Pain is subjective.
- He was behaving childishly when he stormed out of the room
- Pit bulls are the most dangerous dogs of all.
- I liked the way the website broke the topic down into manageable units. That made it really easy to use and to understand the different issues involved.
