Writing Styles: News Vs Opinion

Recognising the difference between news and opinion is a core news literacy skill. In a world where news and information is at our students’ fingertips, being able to distinguish fact vs. opinion has never been more essential. Over the years, social media has helped blur the line between fact and opinion. Now there are virtually limitless sources out there creating content online, and terms like editorial and op-ed have all but faded away. Also, unlike in newspapers or their news websites, there is no vetting process or authority that requires anyone to mention if their online content is fact or opinion.

In this lesson, students will learn how to tell the difference between straight news reporting and opinion journalism and why it matters.

Highlighting the difference between straight news reporting and opinion journalism

Using a straightforward example, do a quick contrast between a news report and an opinion piece. Take for example a news report where you might read “Dog bites child” in the headline. This is fact based and there is no value judgement in evidence.

In contrast with this, a headline in an opinion piece might say, “All dogs should be muzzled and here’s why”.

To illustrate this you could access an opinion article like this example from the Irish Examiner which argues that people should control their dogs.

Here is a great overview on different language clues which can help distinguishing between factual news reporting and opinion journalism.

Activity

• Allow students to access Irish news and opinion articles on Irish newspaper websites or if you have them, please feel free to hand out newspapers to students in the classroom.

The Irish Times

Irish Examiner

The Irish Sun

• Allow students to access the material they are given and ask them to identify an opinion article and a news article.
• Facilitate quick discussion, using the following prompts:

• How did they know which was which?
• Were there any words or phrases in the articles that helped them?
• Challenge: Can they find an example of an opinion in the news report paragraph? What is different about this compared to the opinion piece?

Further resources

Here is a quick and effective lesson from the Guardian which examines tweets about a breaking news story – students are asked to work out which are facts, rumours, speculation, or opinions. You can ask your students to work out which are facts, rumours, speculation, or opinions.

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