By Isqil Najim
It is good to read opinions, but people tend to forget that opinions are what they are: opinion, not fact!
The fact that someone I idolized wrote a very inspiring and catchy opinion that achieves viral consensus does not make that piece a fact above scrutiny.
Indeed, as I have found many times even in my own opinions, there are occasional moments one will go wrong in a bid to explain a complex social matter. Our personal biases can sometimes lead to a clash between subjective viewpoints and objective realities. What smart opinion and column writers do is to bury their biases in between.
Therefore, readers should have an open mind when reading opinions or columns, however juicy, however well-crafted the pieces. However famous or brilliant the writer, notwithstanding their past accurate reporting. For in my many years of consuming opinions, I have found that one cannot be right all the time. One day, you write a brilliant, accurate opinion; the next day, your sentiment was written all over it.
In my younger years, I consumed many opinion columns in Tell, The News, Punch, Concord, and Hint magazines because of my exposure to them, and I learned so much from these writers. In my adult years, I became a critic of many of these same columnists, which has continued to run.
What changed was not maturity or knowledge. What changed was my putting aside my sentiment and being self-aware of issues and the difference between facts and opinions, which sometimes are woven together by the writers.
A more candid reality is that one can be an exceptionally skilled writer and artistic wordsmith, yet still spew complete gibberish as facts. Do not trust the opinions of fiction writers and storytellers, for they are the ones from whom the most misleading narratives sprout. They bring their power of imagination into the news and turn everyone into zombies.
I used to read some writers religiously and unquestionably as authorities, but reading with an open mind has helped me a lot from becoming a zombie in an echo chamber. One does not need to be brilliant to reach here; one just needs to pay attention to the difference between facts and opinions and also evaluate opinions based on facts rather than loyalty or love of the writer.
That is how it should be.
In reading news, I have also found that journalists have mastered the art of smuggling their personal opinions—and someone else's opinions or assumptions—as incontrovertible facts. This should concern everyone, and indeed, even many intellectuals consume this without paying attention.
I pay attention to actual reporting rather than the journalist's interpretation of what happened. I noticed that every journalist has their own view, and this does manifest in the screaming headline which tries to influence the reader's perspective rather than inform them on what actually happened.
Many news reports these days have blurred the boundary between straight reporting and subjective commentary.
At an event, someone was quoted to have said, "We shall ensure that those who cross our path in this journey are thoroughly dealt with..." A journalist writes, "Lagbaja vows revenge"; another writes, "Lagbaja promises no one can stop his mission"; and yet another writes, "Lagbaja threatens violence."
For the readers who read only headlines and the writer's explanation in the first two paragraphs as absolute facts, they are misled, and the information itself loses its facts in the process.
This, in my humble view, is a more insidious threat than opinion columns, mainly because the biased reporting is disguised as objective news, unlike opinion columns where everyone can say, "This is the view of so-and-so."
And there lies the root of most national misinformation and controversies, where the loudest and the trendiest often win the crowd while the main substance is buried in a paragraph readers did not care to give a second look.
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