Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News
Americans often disagree with factual statements they incorrectly label as opinions
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- Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News
- Political awareness, digital savviness and trust in the media all play large roles in the ability to distinguish between factual and opinion news statements
- Republicans and Democrats more likely to see factual and opinion news statements as factual when they favor their side
- Republicans modestly more likely to correctly identify factual statements when attributed to Fox News
- Few classified all factual and opinion statements correctly, though a majority got more correct than incorrect
- Some news statements are more likely than others to be correctly identified as factual or opinion
- Statements not clearly factual or opinion seen more as opinion
- Political awareness
- Digital savviness
- Trust in news media
- News interest
- Those with high political awareness more likely to correctly identify factual and opinion news statements
- Digitally savvy Americans much more likely to correctly identify factual and opinion statements
- Those with a lot of trust in national news organizations more likely to correctly identify factual and opinion news statements
- Republicans and Democrats more likely to correctly identify factual news statements when they favor their side
- Republicans and Democrats more likely to incorrectly classify opinions as factual when they favor their side
- A follow-up classification of factual and opinion statements
- Americans overwhelmingly see accuracy in statements they both correctly and incorrectly deem as factual
- Americans often disagree with factual statements they incorrectly label as opinions
- Democrats’ and Republicans’ ability to correctly identify factual statements modestly influenced when attributed to Fox News
- Margins of error
- How Americans were asked to classify factual and opinion news statements
- Example of news outlet attributions for second set of statements
- Analyzing the impact of news outlets on classifying factual and opinion news statements
- Americans with high news interest somewhat more likely to correctly identify factual statements, but no more likely to do so for opinions
- How the study asked Americans to classify factual versus opinion-based news statements