News vs. Opinion

In lesson 3, you learned about the different "neighborhoods" that can be used to distinguish different types of media products, and how the lines get blurry between categories. In this lesson, we dig a bit deeper into a blurring of lines between news and entertainment and work to make distinctions of opinion journalism and assertions.

The proliferation of opinion into news programming (largely that on cable TV) has led to somewhat of a crisis for various news outlets. We've heard and seen that trust in news media continues to be eroded because of it. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that members of the public had trouble distinguishing between fact-based and opinion-based statements from the news, with only about a quarter of adults correctly identifying the statements as such.

So what can we do?

Hopefully, become smarter about discerning between opinion journalism and mere assertions that purport to be news.

To be clear, when referring to "opinion journalism" we're not talking about a report that quotes experts or witnesses providing their opinion of what happened or will happen.

We're talking about journalists who express their opinions, in movie reviews, columns and editorials and video commentaries.

In this lesson, there are 4 major questions that we'll look to answer:

• How do you tell the difference between straight news reporting and opinion journalism?

• Why should you care which is which?

• What is the value of opinion journalism?

• How do you tell the difference between opinion journalism and mere partisan assertion?