Difference between news and opinion…

Boston Globe: Biased news report or opinion column? Ombudsman Christine Chinlund gives her readers a lesson in telling the difference between news and opinion. I’ve read similar columns by other ombudsmen. I followed Miriam Pepper, of the Kansas City Star, very carefully for years (she’s now editorial page editor). She wrote about this issue at least once a year. I’m going to look for some hard data on media literacy and report back later. But the anecdotal evidence says many Americans have difficulty telling the difference between news articles and opinion columns. MediaMinded chimes in: “Hey, sometimes it’s hard for us in the business to tell the difference, Christine.” In other words, editors sometimes make it difficult to tell the difference by tolerating or, worse, allowing sloppy reporting and biased language.