50+ Lifestyles

PUBLISHER’S CORNER

Fact or Opinion?

By Eloise Graham 

Fact or Opinion…

Election Day is over, but the turmoil of this long, divisive and explosive campaign lingers on. I had not intended to labor on this topic anymore, but yesterday I heard that Mark Zuckerberg, chairman, CEO and co-founder of the social media forum Facebook, was under fire for the many false and unfounded news stories that flooded that particular medium. It made me stop and think. Do we, as Senior Citizens have an obligation to our youth to get them to think for themselves and not blindly follow the crowd?

Back in our day, our news source was a local or national newspaper, maybe a radio station or two and television with up to two, maybe three stations to choose from. For the most part, the journalists that provided us with the stories checked their facts for accuracy before reporting. If an opinion on a subject was stated, we were told it was an opinion. Newspapers had editorial and opinion pages. Sometimes a reporter would say, “In the opinion of this reporter, I…” Gradually, those lines of distinction have became cloudy. Now newscasters slant the wording of their stories or out-and-out state only their opinion as the fact.

Enter the electronic world and social media of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on. Those presenting an article can hide behind pseudo-names and anonymity. They thrive on sensational headlines with no real story to back anything up. False claims and innuendos run rampant!

We need to be discerning when we read or hear anything. But more importantly, we need to teach discernment to the younger generations; to teach them to reason, to search out the facts and dismiss illogical opinions.

I think I was in Junior High when I had a teacher that wrote the comment on the blackboard; “Ninety-nine percent of all people with cancer have eaten a dill pickle. Therefore, dill pickles cause cancer.” He was trying to teach us to think about what we read. The first sentence was a statement. The second sentence really had nothing to do with the first sentence. Dill pickles have nothing to do with cancer. In essence, it was somebody’s opinion and had no validity. In every story, we need to search for “What is the fact?” and “What is the opinion?”

I guess I decided to write on this subject because somebody out there is playing the blame game on social media for swaying the vote of the people. They are pressuring Zuckerberg to not allow all to have pages on Facebook. To me, that smacks of hindering our first amendment. We need to educate people to discern what they read and hear, not hinder people from writing or saying it.
So, I offer you the challenge for 2017 to be discerning in all you read or hear and to teach the youth of America to do likewise. It can be a better 2017 if we know the difference between fact and opinion.