Opinions stated as facts can be deceptive

There are many ways that the media deceives us. Not all of them involve lying. One approach is to state opinions as facts.


A lot of media sources are open to the use of opinion pieces. That's really not so bad. A lot of opinion pieces are properly labeled as such. Unfortunately, some opinion pieces are treated as news, and even factual news reports frequently embed opinions.

As an example, I read an article from the Associated Press prior to the 2016 presidential election. The article was about racially coded messages. Apparently, someone who wrote a book felt that Donald Trump's speeches were coded with racism. How did we know? Because most of Trump's views deviated from those of the person who wrote the book. They went even further and insisted his use of "us" and "we" also qualified as racist.

The article in question was pretty much devoid of any factual content. It was clearly an opinion piece, although it lacked the label. I remember reading some comments on the article. One was from an obvious liberal who insisted that Trump supporters couldn't handle the facts presented. Obviously, this was someone who couldn't figure out that this was an opinion piece.