On Editorial Writing
It is true that opinion columnists offer a personal point of view. However, this is only the start of what should be an industry standard for those professional opinion writers you repeatedly see in the newspapers. As the media critic Aubrey Nagle puts it “the purpose of an editorial or opinion section is not to give an enormous platform to anyone to say whatever they please. The purpose is to offer readers a new perspective, but one that is still based in truth and supported by fact.” As it is, it is too easy for a professional columnist to insist that his or her opinions are accurate interpretations of fact—when this is demonstrably not so. Most newspapers and media outlets simply do not police this standard.
Take, for example, Mr. Bret Stephens, an opinion columnist for The New York Times (NYT) since 2017. He was actually the Pulitzer Prize winner for “Commentary” in 2013. To emphasize that his point of view has “the ring of truth” to it, Stephens tells us that “every word I publish in The Times is rigorously fact-checked.” Can we take him at his word?
Soccer Fans and Pogroms
On 8 November 2024, Stephens wrote a column entitled “The Age of Pogroms Returns.” He writes, “The attack [in Amsterdam] on Israeli [soccer] fans comes after years of rising antisemitism in Europe, much of it within the Muslim community.” His cited source for this assertion is an article in the Wall Street Journal about speech and expression among Muslim immigrants in Germany....
On Editorial Writing It is true that opinion columnists offer a personal point of view. However, this is only the start of what should be an industry standard for those professional opinion writer...