For example, members of each political party were more likely to label both factual and opinion statements as factual when they appealed more to their political side. At this point, then, the U. But with the vast majority of Americans getting at least some news online, gaps across population groups in the ability to sort news correctly raise caution.
Instead, this study was intended to explore whether the public sees distinctions between news that is based upon objective evidence and news that is not. Respondents were asked to determine if each was a factual statement whether accurate or not or an opinion statement whether agreed with or not. For more information on how statements were selected for the study, see below.
In the survey, respondents read a series of news statements and were asked to put each statement in one of two categories:. All of the factual statements were accurate. The statements were written and classified in consultation with experts both inside and outside Pew Research Center. The goal was to include an equal number of statements that would more likely appeal to the political right or to the political left, with an overall balance across statements. All of the statements related to policy issues and current events.
The individual statements are listed in an expandable box at the end of this section, and the complete methodology, including further information on statement selection, classification, and political appeal, can be found here. To analyze this, the study aimed to include an equal number of statements that played to the sensitivities of each side, maintaining an overall ideological balance across statements.
But this time, most saw statements attributed to one of three specific news outlets: one with a left-leaning audience The New York Times , one with a right-leaning audience Fox News Channel and one with a more mixed audience USA Today. Labeling statements with a news outlet had no impact on how Republicans or Democrats classified the opinion statements.
And, overall, the same general findings about differences based on political awareness, digital savviness and trust also held true for this second set of statements. The study probed one step further for the initial set of 12 statements. If respondents identified a statement as factual, they were then asked if they thought it was accurate or inaccurate. If they identified a statement to be an opinion, they were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with it. When Americans see a news statement as factual, they overwhelmingly also believe it to be accurate.
This is true for both statements they correctly and incorrectly identified as factual, though small portions of the public did call statements both factual and inaccurate. When Americans incorrectly classified factual statements as opinions, they most often disagreed with the statement. All lessons. Lesson plans and resources. It ' s your choice. When we make The Guardian Foundation available to you online, we use cookies and similar technologies to help us to do this. Some are necessary to help our website work properly and can't be switched off, and some are optional but support The Guardian Foundation and your experience in other ways.
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Scott Trust Bursary. Made in Britain. Incubator for Independent Media. Programmes we support. Past Programmes. Our team. Our board. Support us. Lesson 7 Identifying the difference between fact and opinion. Journalist training school background:.
Journalists must not include their own opinions in a news report. They can include the opinions of those involved in the story, but must not report them as fact. They must be able to tell the difference between fact and opinion, as well as speculation and rumour.
Download this lesson plan. As scientists learned more about the world, some of the things they thought were true were later proven to be false after new or better information was discovered. While cavities may look like tiny tunnels, we know now they these are caused, in part, by bacteria. The scientist Nicolaus Copernicus argued this statement was untrue about years ago when he said the earth and all the other planets travel around the sun. The more scientists learned about the universe, people were able to understand even more about about the world around us.
The statement that most people like chocolate ice cream is something we can prove by asking many people what their favorite ice cream is and recording their answers. But does that make chocolate ice cream the best flavor of ice cream? Instead of objective, it is subjective, meaning that it depends on what someone thinks.
You can agree or disagree. And there can be lots of different ideas about what is the best and why. This is important. This is important too. But everyone should know the difference so that they know how to think for themselves. People often try to treat their own opinion statements as truth statements because they want others to think they must agree with them.
Listen and see if you can find examples in your own life of facts and opinions. Some opinions you may agree with and others you may not, but you get to choose for yourself. Now that you have an idea about what is objective true or false and subjective opinion , see if you can correctly identify each. By providing your email address, you consent to receive emails and special offers from NNY An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.
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