Opinion journalism

Opinion journalism is a type of journalism in which the journalist gives his own commentary, analysis or interpretation of an issue or attempts to persuade the reader of a certain viewpoint. The opinions expressed may be, depending on the type of opinion journalism, either the journalist's personal views or the stance of the publication for which he is writing. The most common types of opinion journalism are editorials, op-eds, columns and news analyses. Opinion journalism became common in the late 1400s with the advent of the printing press and the end of feudalism but was not considered separate from ordinary journalism until the late 19th century.

Characteristics and functions

In opinion journalism the journalist states his (or the publication's) view on an issue, attempts to persuade the reader to adopt a certain point of view, provides commentary or analyses a situation. Opinion journalism is often political. Opinion journalism differs stylistically from informational journalism in that it might come from the first person, contain loaded language, contain personal perspectives like anecdotes or use rhetoric to advance a point.

In newspapers, opinion pieces are in their dedicated section, which is typically headed with "analysis", "review", "opinion" or "editorial", to distinguish the articles in the section from informational news; on websites, opinion pieces may or may not be in their own section. Opinion journalism and informational journalism have been conflated both in the 21st century and throughout journalism's history; opinion journalism usually contains factual information and informational journalism often contains the journalist's opinions and commentary.

A commonly stated function of opinion journalism is to act as a "point of view" for the reader; that is to say, to give the reader a variety of perspectives on a subject so that he can counter his preexisting beliefs and decide, for himself, what the correct stance is. Opinion journalism increases discourse between members of the public on the issues it covers, and the commentary in it may also inform readers of the contexts behind and reasons for current events. Opinion journalism has some similarity to informational journalism in that many opinion journalists try, like regular journalists, to hold public officials accountable.

Types

There are four common types of opinion journalism: editorials, op-eds, columns and news analyses.

Editorial: An editorial attempts to advance a specific point of view or incite its reader to do something. Editorials represent the viewpoints of an entire publication or editorial board, not only its author's; thus it may be authored by multiple people or published anonymously, in which case it is an "unsigned editorial". Editorials might include statistics and objective information gained from the publication's ordinary news coverage in order to strengthen their arguments. Editorials in newspapers are on the left side of the last page.

Op-ed: An op-ed (short for "opposite of the editorial page") is similar to an editorial but written by a guest writer, like an academic, politician or public intellectual, who does not work for the publication. Op-eds express their individual authors' opinions and are located on the page opposite the editorial page.

Column: A column expresses the opinions of its author, who usually works for the publication, and does not always argue for a specific point. Columns are definitionally broader than editorials and encompass any non-fact-based article that is not an editorial or op-ed. They may include personal anecdotes, whereas editorials and op-eds generally cannot. A column may engage in polemics, analyse an issue, give advice to the reader or mock a public figure. A series of columns written by the same author may feature regularly, such as on a weekly basis, in the publication. Columns in newspapers are on the reverse side of the first page.

News analysis: A news analysis, which is usually authored by a regular journalist and not an editorialist, includes the journalist's analysis, commentary and predictions of an event. In an analysis a journalist may relate a contemporary event to similar happenings throughout history or explain how events lead to one another or are connected.

History

In Europe in the late 1400s, the feudal system fell and the printing press became ubiquitous. Before that time, journalists used to note only what they observed (leaving out any interpretations or commentary) and submit their handwritten reports to the wealthy elite that comprised their readership. Feudalism's replacement with capitalism and the printing press's ability to quickly produce documents (pamphlets, books and news sheets) turned writing into a commodity. Journalists began to incorporate their own opinions and personalities into their writing in order to draw readers. British journalist Bob Franklin considered Michel de Montaigne, who wrote commentary on events of his time (the 16th century) in his essays, to have been an early version of a newspaper columnist.

Opinion journalism was, for most of its history from thereon, rarely separated from factual journalism. It was routine for journalists to include commentary and to push their beliefs in their news coverage. For example, Benjamin Franklin wrote regularly about his opinions, observations and ideas in his Pennsylvania Gazette between 1729 and 1748. Newspapers were often funded by political parties, extremely biased and intended specifically to propagate their publishers' ideologies.

Throughout the 19th century, American newspaper publishers and journalists became less politically partisan and increased the objectivity of their reportage in response to the public's demand for factual news. The development of the telegraph and the new practice of employing full-time reporters led to journalism being treated purely as a means of spreading information. By the late 19th century American newspapers and magazines kept opinion pieces in a separate section from their normal journalism. By the 1920s the Progressive movement, which pushed for better journalistic practices, had turned objectivity into a standard in American journalism; subjectivity was relegated to columns and editorials. Journalists' opinions remained an expected part of news in Latin America and the United Kingdom, so newspapers there did not decrease in partisanship and opinionation as those in the United States did.

In the early 20th century in Spain, Eugeni d'Ors invented a type of column, a glosa, that consisted of several brief aphorisms, the last of which would often reveal the column's political point. Around the same time other Spanish journalists developed ensayimo, another form of opinion journalism, that read like an essay. In the 1970s after the end of Franco's regime, columnists, many of whom were also novelists, developed a style of writing, periodismo informativo de creación, that applied the narrative devices of literary fiction to the real-life basis of opinion journalism. Among the columnists who created this style were Francisco Umbral, Rosa Montero, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Maruja Torres.

Television replaced radio by the 1950s as the primary medium through which news was transmitted. Televised news started off as straightforward and dependent on audio, but as its visual component improved through the 1960s it developed an opinionated style of reportage. News programs now featured editorial segments where hosts voiced their opinions. Two notable such hosts were Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, who in their segments condemned the Vietnam War and McCarthyism respectively.

From the 1940s to the 1990s political commentary and "interpretive" pieces started to comprise an increasingly large portion of election coverage in newspapers in the United States, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. Newspaper articles from Belgium, too, became increasingly speculative from 1985 onward. In 1970 The New York Times, believing that readers would like to read more opinion articles, began including an op-ed section opposite the page the editorials were situated on; this op-ed section became the basis for the modern form of newspaper opinion sections in the United States.

The advent of the internet in the late 1990s and the 2000s gave journalists more means and more leeway to express their ideas; online journalism was more opinionated and personal, even in its regular coverage, than its print predecessor. Around the same time, cable television news programs became more conversational, abstract and argumentative, since this informal style of journalism attracted specific audiences; broadcast television, contrariwise, targeted a more general audience than cable and thus kept a factual manner of reporting. The informational sections of American print newspapers have remained objective relative to those of digital and televised journalism.

Ethics

Journalistic organisations generally support opinion journalism as long as it is clearly identified as such, so that readers cannot confuse it with factual journalism.

Research

Political

The Pew Research Center reported in 2018 that, when shown five statements of fact and five statements of opinion from the news, 26% of a sample of 5,035 American adults correctly classified all the factual statements and 35% correctly classified all the opinion statements; people with high political awareness, technological proficiency and interest and trust in the news were all somewhat more likely to identify every statement accurately. If someone misidentified an opinion as factual he was likelier to believe it to be true; conversely if he misidentified a fact as opinion he was likelier to believe it to be false. People who associated themselves with either the Democratic or Republican parties were likelier to misidentify a statement as factual if it appealed to their political views.

In 2021 three academics from the Missouri School of Journalism used Factiva's database to gather 155 editorials, 8 op-eds and 172 columns, all of which discussed hate speech, from 48 American newspapers. They reported that many of the opinion journalists stated or insinuated that hate speech (defined by the authors as "speech that attacks or attempts to subordinate any group of people based on social characteristics such as gender, race, sexual orientation, or disability") was a natural product of the freedom of speech and the press, that unreasonable accusations of hate speech were being employed by one party (often the Democratic Party) to vilify the other (often the Republican Party) and that hate speech was a necessary part of discourse.

Demographics of opinion journalists

A survey in 2017 about the demographic and occupational statistics of 133 American opinion journalists, of whom 117 were included in the final report, found that most (63.2%) had prior experience in a journalism organisation and that the average opinion journalist had, at the time of the survey, been an opinion writer for 10–14 years. Most had more than 25 years of experience in journalism in general. 29.9% supported the Democratic Party and 8.5% supported the Republican Party. 36.1% were politically independent, and the rest of the sample supported some other party.

As was the case for journalists in general most opinion journalists were male (71%) and white (88.9%). 4.3% were black, 3.4% were Hispanic and 3.4% belonged to another race. 93.9% of opinion journalists had attained some form of college education: 6.8% had a doctorate, 35% had a graduate degree and 52.1% had a four-year degree. Compared to other types of journalists opinion journalists were older on average, 75.2% being between the ages of 45 and 74.

Criticism

People have criticised opinion journalism for decreasing the public’s trust in the media. According to David Andreatta, a media relations specialist for the University of Rochester, the public expects news sources to be factual and reliable, so when informational news has elements of opinion or opinion pieces are not labelled as such, people become uncertain what is fact and what is opinion; as a result they lose trust in the news.

In 2024 The Economist published an article, "The Muted Megaphone", that accused the increased presence of opinion in journalism of leaving the public ill-informed and overtaking fact-based journalism in prevalence. Opinion pieces, according to the article, attract more attention the more extreme the views they express are. When politically moderate, and often more accurate and informative, media receives less attention than extreme media, fact-based journalism becomes more difficult for the average person to find.

In 2020, Eliana Miller of the Poynter Institute stated that the layouts of many news websites, unlike newspapers, do not mark opinion pieces as such; as a result readers must use language cues (like use of the first person, promotional language and advocacy for a certain viewpoint) and differences in web page design to determine whether an article is an opinion or a part of regular coverage.

Parker Molloy of Dame Magazine claimed in a 2022 article that news outlets' tendency to present opinion pieces similarly to factual coverage causes conspiracy theories and falsehoods espoused by the pieces' authors to be disseminated as if they were true, especially when the news outlets are otherwise considered trustworthy; for example, in 2020 Newsweek published an opinion piece in which John Eastman falsely claimed that Kamala Harris would be ineligible for vice president since her parents were not US citizens when she was born. Because of Newsweek's reputation several right-wing news outlets reported the misinformation as fact.

Works cited

Franklin, Bob (2008). Pulling newspapers apart: analysing print journalism. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-63070-9.
Zamith, Rodrigo (22 August 2022). "The American Journalism Handbook - Concepts, Issues, and Skills (Zamith)". Social Sci LibreTexts. Retrieved 8 December 2025.
Seguín, Bécquer (2024). The op-ed novel: a literary history of post-Franco Spain (First printing ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-29481-3.