Think you understand opinion vs. news? Take this quiz

Let’s start with a one-question quiz. Is the following headline more likely introducing opinion or news?: “It’s been a rough year for Journalism.”

Answer: It is more likely headlining an opinion piece because it offers an unsourced judgment. It’s also a dumb joke; the headline above was about this year’s Kentucky Derby, where a horse named “Journalism” placed second in the race this year but ran away from the field with respect to bad puns.

It’s also a trick question, as that headline did not appear above an article published by a news organization. No, it was a light-hearted attempt at a fake headline posted on social media after Journalism was overtaken by a horse named Sovereignty in the derby’s final stretch.

Others:

“Sovereignty defeats Journalism. Tale as old as time.”

“A dark day for Journalism.”

“You don’t get into journalism to make money.”

Ho ho ho. All of these brought to you not by the satirical Onion but by Adam Hill, a sports columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who closely tracks horse racing and found himself tired of puns on race day. The Review-Journal published an opinion piece that said so. His sources for those lines (all quoted in his piece) hail from social media – from Instagram, X, Facebook – where memes and other comedic forces tend to masquerade as swipeable tabloid.

Pointing out (as we must) that the first headline offered could have been news had it been presented like this: “It’s been a rough year for Journalism, according to the horse’s trainer.” This would have meant the trainer’s opinion (an authority on the subject) was deemed newsworthy by a reporter likely writing in detached third person. This also means the trainer said so to the reporter, as evidenced by a recording, video or the reporter’s notebook, depending on said reporter’s style.

If the reporter had concocted the quote on his own, that would make him a fiction writer and fired as soon as his editor discovered his malfeasance. If he’d been uninterested in attribution and writing in the first person, opinion is the more likely category, often presented in a column or an “op-ed” by U.S. news outlets, meaning opinion-editorial.

But what is a columnist in relation to a reporter anyway? Are both roles considered journalism? How do we know when a headline is real or a social media attempt at lampoonery? Do social media users understand the difference? And have we come to prefer quick-hit tabloid journalism in any event, because it’s more “fun” and disposable?

We dug in.

News literacy: It matters

Hill’s actual headline at the Review-Journal was this: “Kentucky Derby is overrated — and so are the jokes.” The article appeared on the left side of the paper’s website above a hard news piece: “2 juveniles dead after multi-vehicle crash on I-15 north of Las Vegas.”

The former offered commentary on a news event. The latter reported the facts of a news event. One was opinion, the other hard news — sitting side-by-side on a single media company’s website, which did not differentiate between the two.

The distinction matters. With the Pew Research Center finding more than half of Americans get news on social media, what’s unclear is how much of that news is actual news. The trend is most pronounced on X and Facebook, where users are more likely to view the platforms as reliable sources for news, while Instagram users are less likely to use that product as “a news source.” Pew found that 73% of Instagram users reported seeing “funny posts” that reference current events, while about two-thirds of those polled said they often see friends and other connections commenting on current events – another factor that muddles the pool of content.

An informal analysis conducted by Media.com (ahem), meanwhile, found that legacy news companies focused on traditional print (especially big ones) are far more likely than social media platforms or cable television outlets to distinguish between opinion and news on their platforms.

The Wall Street Journal leads the way in this regard, devoting a detailed section on its website to explaining why and how the paper takes great pains to separate opinion and news. Its thorough “independent news vs. independent opinion” page deploys a literal line down the middle in an attempt to explain the difference.

The Journal’s newsroom provides “facts, data and information — not assertions or opinions — and [strives] to be a model for ethical, factual and ambitious news reporting,” the page reads. Its opinion staff, separate from the newsroom, processes editorials from its editorial board as well as columns from contributors and outside experts to offer “point of view.”

The idea is to wall off impartial news reporting from freedom of perspective or speech. The Journal marks news stories differently from op-eds and runs them under different mastheads. It denotes a different byline for either. And it explains which side of the fence a writer hails from in an “about the author” section offered under every article.

Higher profile print-focused entities like the Washington Post and the New York Times follow the Journal’s example and devote part of their web presence to literacy about the topic, explaining how news operates free of bias in an ideal world, while opinion is laced with analysis or emotional statements.

Still, it’s unclear if readers engage with these explanations. Tom Rosenstiel, professor at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism, said recently on a podcast called “Is that a fact?” that “news organizations have not made it easy for consumers to differentiate between news and the views of an individual or media outlet.”

Rosenstiel added that the rise of 24-hour cable TV after 1996 in particular pressed the media world away from a “just the facts” code of ethics. He noted that Fox and MSNBC at the time had to compete with CNN, which employed more reporters, so both filled their time slots with opinion shows that provided more slanted views.

Talk is cheap, in other words. News? Not so much.

Both ends of the business are still considered “journalism,” however. Editors in the old days worked for a given side of a news business but that is often not the case at smaller outlets these days. Both sides fall within the umbrella term “journalism,” as do broadcast news programs. As stated, TV outlets are less inclined to note the distinction because filling a 24-hour news cycle with news is more expensive than employing pundits to discuss ramifications. Indeed, pundits often appear for free or receive a nominal fee, while reporters are employed full-time and tend to require full newsrooms to support them.

One would also note that the aforementioned Las Vegas Review-Journal does not explain the difference online, probably because it’s a small paper where blurriness happens. Hill is listed as a “sports columnist/reporter,” meaning he’s filling two roles at once. One role (columnist) is more often associated with “newstainment” or “infotainment” in recent decades — terms that essentially mean the sensationalism of news for entertainment purposes. Infotainment on outlets such as CNN, MSNBC or Fox News in the United States is common, but the genre also does well under popular titles like The View or The Daily Show on networks not solely committed to news. Podcasts are often opinion-based as well.

Fox News, meanwhile, won a ruling at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year that found the company had no obligation to educate its viewers about the distinction. The SEC ruled that a petition brought by Fox investor John Chevedden that urged the network to provide its viewers with literacy had failed to show why the SEC should intervene in “ordinary business matters.”

Chevedden has also used Fox shareholder events to push the topic as recently as 2023. In his filing with the SEC, the investor said the network should label its shows “news” or “opinion” to avoid the sort of fallout (and viewer confusion) that contributed to a $788 million settlement the network reached with Dominion Resources over claims broadcast on Fox that the company’s voting machines were rigged during the 2020 U.S. election. Such claims began with former Fox News opinionator Tucker Carlson but were often repeated by other anchors and reporters at the network, making the network responsible in many eyes.

Chevedden’s petition to the SEC noted that studies have shown “that Fox viewers are more likely to be misinformed about issues including elections and the integrity of voting systems, COVID-19, climate change and other issues.”

“Typically, it is Fox’s opinion shows that are identified as the basis for the misinformation,” he wrote. “Blurred lines between opinion and journalism also introduce significant business risk from potential reputational damage.”

We see that even Chevedden is confused about media literacy here. He separates opinion from journalism in that statement. This likely reflects his own personal idea of what journalism should be, but op-eds and first-person non-fiction essays are just as much part of the industry as hard-nosed reporting or this year’s second-place horse at Churchill Downs. 

MSNBC and CNN appear to be no different than Fox in terms of not providing this literacy. Both tend to attract a left-leaning viewership to counter the more conservative fan base found at Fox News, but neither offers much in the way of distinction on mastheads or “about” pages on the web. The closest thing would be a recent video clip on CNN about how media literacy is now required study at K-12 schools in New Jersey, Texas and Delaware.

Social media companies are more like those networks: They do not explore the distinction in an official capacity, though many discussions of “opinion vs. news” are available as content on their platforms, which are often billed as neutral about content unless it is hateful or violent. PBS offers an excellent video on the topic, available on YouTube. 

Among the atypical comments posted on YouTube was one from a user named @lewa3910 : “As usual, PBS has to step up where mainstream news has screwed up in media literacy training.”

Why we care

Why should a social media company like Media.com or any other social media outfit care? 

Simple: Social media companies act as news aggregators as well as opinion-spreaders. According to Pew, younger Americans are more likely to get news from TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram — and many seem to be confusing opinion with news, as memes and other forms often found on social media tend to operate as quick-hit analyzers, even when the analysis is intended as comedy.

In a prior age, when media options were more scarce, the distinction may have seemed more obvious to daily readers. Literacy came with the territory when reading a clearly divided and organized newspaper day after day.

News is the primary business of news companies, so they see the value (literally) in separating one from the other. But social media is more like TV, so far. The value of separating opinion from news might undermine a bottom line that says “the more eyeballs the better.” Traditional print companies are more likely to value “quality” readers willing to spend money on subscriptions in this environment, while the new kids want volume upon volume.

Media.com CEO James Mawhinney says he is “acutely aware of how the lines between fact-based reporting and opinion have become blurred.” He believes this is largely due to the print-to-online transition and publishers’ need to replace classified advertising revenues with paywall subscriptions to sustain operations. He notes that valuations of online, vertical-specific portals now tower over traditional news publications that have seemingly abandoned their “rivers of gold” – a media term once used to describe the cash generated  by classified advertising. 

“This simply means the business model that once served publications serves them no longer, and they are forced to find other ways to keep afloat,” he said. “This has created an unhelpful tension between fact-based reporting and opinion, which has plagued the industry. Not only have the goalposts changed, but the game has changed.”

Media.com is therefore studying what the future of media should look like so that we can chart a course that sees media serve the public as originally intended — for decision-making and entertainment, not to keep struggling businesses afloat and journalists employed. Smaller and local media outlets have responded in various ways to these changes, among them increasingly relying on donors and outside funding, which places their independence in doubt as many donors seem to donate with a given agenda in mind.

Media.com is committed to becoming a trusted source of news, Mawhinney added. This is in line with the company’s mission of restoring trust in online information, which is where most information gets consumed in this era.

“It's a big task, but I believe we are up to the challenge,” he said.

Resources: 

The News Literacy Project and the Pew Research Center both offer much more on the importance of understanding news vs. opinion. 

Media Bias/Fact Check offers bias ratings of most U.S. news outlets.