Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/MEbuN?wr=true
Big, solid, nuanced take against the 11 page opinion piece.
Maybe tell the other folks reading the same online conversation platform as you are what you thought made this specific link you decided to comment on “garbage”.
No thanks. I do not want to talk about or critique an opinion piece. I want objective political news from this channel. Leave opinion for the comments.
I am someone who is against opinion pieces in general, regardless of the content. Nate Silver also has an argument against them: the main difference with an opinion piece and normal journalism is that opinions don’t need to be fact checked. In which case there’s no reason for them to exist. If the argument cannot survive fact checking, it shouldn’t be published.
Opinions, columns, and editorials are all traditional news formats where a known personality gives their take on current events. Basically you can’t “fact check” someone’s commentary because they’re not reporting factual takes on current events, and you can’t really objectively say “your analogy to this historical event is not analogous enough” for instance because there isn’t really measures for these things. Nate Silver’s argument against them is itself an opinion that can’t be fact checked. “Fact checking” itself is also determined by the ideology you’re choosing to determine facts by or even which specific facts are chosen to be highlighted in an article. What is and what ought isn’t something that you can simply fact check.
The fact that it’s “traditional” is not a good reason to keep something around despite the negative consequences. The fact is, most news consumers do not know about the lower editorial standards of opinion articles, so opinion pieces have been a significant source of misinformation. This is how we get Jim Carey writing about climate skepticism in a major newspaper.
What’s so impossible about a fact-checked journalistic article entitled: “Should opinion pieces be eliminated?” Seems possible to me!
You seem to think my objection has something to do with whether it’s obvious that this particular piece is an opinion piece? I have no idea why you think this. Completely bizarre, and what an unnecessarily aggressive tone.
I am against opinion pieces because most consumers do not know that they have lower editorial standards, making them a big source of misinformation. If opinion pieces had the same journalistic standards, I would not be opposed to them.
That’s just intellectually lazy. We should be able to process analysis that isn’t our own.
Then you are also intellectually lazy, because there is no way you are verifying the truth of every claim made in the articles you read. The role of newspapers is to inform people, not make random claims of dubious truth and have readers “do their own work”. It’s astounding that people are actually against basic fact checking.
