Opinion journalism

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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.[1][2]

Characteristics

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Definition

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Opinion journalism encompasses any form of journalism in which the journalist states his (or the publication's) view on an issue (often political), attempts to persuade the reader to adopt a certain point of view, provides commentary on an event, analyses a situation or satirises public figures. Any article of opinion journalism is called an opinion piece.[3][2]

Distinction from news

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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.[4]

In newspapers, opinion pieces are located in a 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 might be distinguished in a variety of ways, or not at all. Some online news outlets put the word "opinion" next to their opinion pieces' headlines.[4]

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.[5][2]

Functions

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Opinion journalism has multiple functions. A commonly stated one is to act as a "point of view" for the audience; that is to say, an opinion writer's commentary and analysis gives the reader or viewer a variety of perspectives on a subject so that he can counter his preexisting beliefs, consider every possible viewpoint and decide what his own opinion should be.[6][7] The commentary in opinion journalism also informs readers of the reasons for, the contexts behind and the connections between problems, events or situations.[1] By giving people arguments that they can use to debate the answers to difficult questions, opinion journalists' work increases discourse between members of the public on the issues they cover.[8][9] Many opinion journalists try, like news journalists, to hold public officials accountable and advocate for the public's best interests through their journalism.[9][10]

Types

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There are four common types of opinion journalism: editorials, op-eds, columns and news analyses.[2]

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".[11] Editorials might include statistics and objective information gained from the publication's ordinary news coverage in order to strengthen their arguments.[2] Editorials in newspapers are on the left side of the last page.[4]
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.[6][2]
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 neither an editorial nor an 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.[12][11] A series of columns written by the same author may feature regularly, such as on a weekly basis, in the publication.[2] Columns in newspapers are on the reverse side of the first page.[4]
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. [2]

History

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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.[13]

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.[14][11]

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,[15] had turned objectivity into a standard in American journalism; subjectivity was relegated to columns and editorials. Columns were often syndicated, meaning that one column would be run in many newspapers throughout the country.[16] 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.[14][17][11][18]

Opinion pieces, such as this editorial from 1954, appear in a dedicated section.

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.[19]

In the United States and United Kingdom, 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.[20] 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.[11]

In the United States during the 1960s, writers who disapproved of the Vietnam War became disillusioned with the notion of objectivity. New Journalism and gonzo journalism came into existence as a result. Both of these styles disregarded objectivity, applied literary techniques to nonfiction and centred their authors' subjective experiences. Among these styles' purveyors were Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Gay Talese and Hunter S. Thompson.[21] The term "New Journalism" was applied, retrospectively in the 1970s, to a similar movement in journalism in Japan that also occurred in the 1960s; Japanese contributors to New Journalism included Tachibana Takashi, Sawaki Kōtarō (ja), Saki Ryūzō and Uwamae Junichirō.[22]

From the 1940s to the 1990s political commentary and speculative pieces started to comprise an increasingly large portion of election coverage in newspapers in the United States, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.[23] 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.[6]

In the 1970s, after the end of Francisco Franco's regime following his death in 1975, 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. [19]

Televised opinion journalism was popularised in Japan in the 1980s by the station TV Asahi. Kume Hiroshi, who hosted the station's news programme, played a character called a "caster" who made acerbic commentary in mockery of the Liberal Democratic Party.[24]

Through the 1990s and 2000s, cable television news programs in the United States 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.[25]

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. The informational sections of American print newspapers have remained objective relative to those of digital and televised journalism.[25]

Social media appeared in the 2000s and 2010s and has become one of the most widespread methods of communication, thus far.[26] Because information can be disseminated instantaneously through social media, the news cycle has shortened. Some opinion writers share their pieces on social media sites like Substack. Many news outlets have, in a bid to keep up with their readers' interests, stopped running syndicated columns and replaced them with local columnists.[16]

Ethics

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The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics does not have provisions specifically for opinion journalists but urges journalists of all genres to represent facts accurately in their commentary, avoid conflicts of interests, reject favours and clearly mark non-news reporting as such. News outlets generally hold their opinion writers up to the same ethical standards to which they hold up their regular journalists. Opinion journalists can be, and have been, fired for espousing opinions that their employers deem politically incorrect, extremist, insensitive or harmful to their organisations' reputations.[27][28]

Journalistic organisations generally support opinion journalism as long as it is clearly identified as such (e.g. by the presence of the word "opinion" right next to the headline) to prevent readers from confusing it with fact-based journalism.[29][4]

Research

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Political

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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.[30]

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.[29]

Demographics of American opinion journalists

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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.[11]

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.[11]

Criticism

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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.[6]

In 2018 Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich of the RAND Corporation published a report, Truth Decay, in which they blamed the increasing prominence of opinion journalism for the shrinking role of facts (which they dubbed "truth decay") in American discourse, a perceived deterioration of civil discussion and a growing distrust of mass media.[9][31]

In 2024 The Economist published an article, "The Muted Megaphone", that argued that the increased presence of opinion in journalism was 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.[32]

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.[4]

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.[33]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Franklin 2008, p. 106.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Zamith 2022, 8.2.
  3. ^ Franklin 2008, p. 106, 110.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Miller, Eliana (15 July 2020). "Opinion, news or editorial? Readers often can't tell the difference". Poynter. Retrieved 9 December 2025.
  5. ^ Franklin 2008, pp. 106–107.
  6. ^ a b c d Andreatta, David (9 September 2025). "Opinion journalism in a polarized age: vital or vitriol?". University of Rochester. Retrieved 9 December 2025.
  7. ^ "News Opinion". WSJ News Literacy. Retrieved 11 December 2025.
  8. ^ Tahat, Khalaf; Mansoori, Ahmed; Tahat, Dina; Habes, Mohammed (September 2024). "Examining opinion journalism in the United Arab Emirates national press: A comparative analysis". Newspaper Research Journal. 45 (3): 351–369. doi:10.1177/07395329241255159. ISSN 0739-5329.
  9. ^ a b c Soysal, Zeynep (31 July 2025). "An Epistemic Role for Opinion Journalism". Political Philosophy. 2 (2). doi:10.16995/pp.23009. Retrieved 11 December 2025.
  10. ^ Loker, Kevin (10 September 2024). "How local opinion journalism serves civic discourse and democracy". American Press Institute. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Kelling, Kimberly; Thomas, Ryan J. (1 December 2018). "The roles and functions of opinion journalists". Newspaper Research Journal. 39 (4): 398–419. doi:10.1177/0739532918806899. ISSN 0739-5329.
  12. ^ Franklin 2008, p. 110.
  13. ^ Franklin 2008, pp. 106–109.
  14. ^ a b Lerner, Kevin M. (22 June 2020). "Journalists believe news and opinion are separate, but readers can't tell the difference". The Conversation. Retrieved 9 December 2025.
  15. ^ Fabian, Steven (1 October 2021). "An Interview with Dr. Andie Tucher, Columbia Journalism School". Radical History Review. 2021 (141): 203–211. doi:10.1215/01636545-9170794. ISSN 0163-6545.
  16. ^ a b "Journalism Explainer: The Role of Opinion Journalism". George W. Bush Presidential Center. 22 October 2025. Retrieved 14 December 2025.
  17. ^ Potter, Deborah (2006), "Newspapers in America" (PDF), English Teaching Forum, archived from the original (PDF) on 6 October 2025
  18. ^ Schudson, Michael (November 2012). "The Chattering Class". Contexts. 11 (4): 70–71. doi:10.1177/1536504212466342. ISSN 1536-5042.
  19. ^ a b Seguín 2024, pp. 3, 10.
  20. ^ Maniou, T.A. and Papadopoulou, L. (2025). Broadcast Journalism: Television. In The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies (eds T.P. Vos, F. Hanusch, D. Dimitrakopoulou, M. Geertsema-Sligh and A. Sehl). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118841570.iejs0187
  21. ^ Franklin et al. 2005, p. 176.
  22. ^ Woolsey 2025, pp. 72–76.
  23. ^ Soontjens, Karolin (19 May 2019). "The Rise of Interpretive Journalism: Belgian newspaper coverage, 1985–2014". Journalism Studies. 20 (7): 952–971. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2018.1467783. ISSN 1461-670X.
  24. ^ Woolsey 2025, pp. iv., 61.
  25. ^ a b Kavanagh, Jennifer; Marcellino, William; Blake, Jonathan S.; Smith, Shawn; Davenport, Steven; Gizaw, Mahlet (14 May 2019). Facts Versus Opinions: How the Style and Language of News Presentation Is Changing in the Digital Age (Report). RAND Corporation.
  26. ^ Hendrickx, Jonathan; Opgenhaffen, Michaël (3 July 2024). "Introduction: Understanding Social Media Journalism". Journalism Studies. 25 (9): 919–930. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2024.2368861. ISSN 1461-670X.
  27. ^ Pewitt-Jones, Kim. “Journalists’ Speech: When Does It Cross Ethical Boundaries?” Southwestern Mass Communication Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, Spring 2012, pp. 1–12. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=86961319&site=eds-live&scope=site.
  28. ^ "The Ethics of the Opinion Journalist | Stony Brook Center for News Literacy". digitalresource.center. Stony Brook Center for News Literacy. Retrieved 14 December 2025.
  29. ^ a b Johnson, Brett Gregory; Thomas, Ryan J.; Kelling, Kimberly (2 February 2021). "Boundaries of Hate: Ethical Implications of the Discursive Construction of Hate Speech in U.S. Opinion Journalism". Journal of Media Ethics. 36 (1): 20–35. doi:10.1080/23736992.2020.1841643. ISSN 2373-6992.
  30. ^ Sumida, Nami; Mitchell, Amy; Gottfried, Jeffrey; Barthel, Michael (18 June 2018). "Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News". Pew Research Center. Retrieved 10 December 2025.
  31. ^ Kavanagh, Jennifer; Rich, Michael D. (15 January 2018). Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life (Report).
  32. ^ "The Muted Megaphone." (7 December 2024). The Economist. https://www.proquest.com/magazines/muted-megaphone/docview/3141083347/se-2. Retrieved 2025-12-12.
  33. ^ Molloy, Parker (13 April 2022). "Opinion Journalism Is Broken - Dame Magazine". Retrieved 9 December 2025.

Works cited

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Opinion journalism.