Is it fact or opinion or neither?

January 13, 2015 5:59 PM

Journalism filter: Today I read this sentence in the Washinton post, "Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective." I googled the term " reported opinion" and came up with nothing. Can someone with a journalism background tell me what this term is supposed to mean or signify?
posted by Xurando to Writing & Language (12 answers total)

It's just a snappy way of saying she gives readers the best of both worlds: she tells you fact based on her reporting (like a normal reporter), but she also doesn't hold back from telling you her opinions about those facts (like a columnist or blogger). It's also a way of saying she doesn't have a false pretense of neutrality — she has a point of view and she's not going to hide it.

My Google search of the phrase "reported opinion" (in quotes) turns up about 40,000 results. Many of these references seem to have a legal meaning that has nothing to do with your question ("opinion" = a court's writing, and "reported" = published).
posted by John Cohen at 6:13 PM on January 13, 2015

Response by poster: So in reading reported opinion how does one tell what's fact and what's opinion? I also got the legal links but those don't pertain to this question.
posted by Xurando at 6:19 PM on January 13, 2015

That's an odd way to put it. A lot of columnists do report facts and do write in a news style, but it's known that they have a specific editorial viewpoint and are reporting based on their opinion. I guess that is the Washington Post's way of describing her role as a blogger/columnist. She might've written that blurb herself, and it might've been meant to sound more journalisty than opiniony.
posted by AppleTurnover at 6:31 PM on January 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

Glancing through that particular person's work, I'd say it's safest to treat everything that's not in quotation marks as opinion.
posted by teremala at 6:33 PM on January 13, 2015 [7 favorites]

This sounds like what Matt Taibbi does. I'd say what he does is reporting, but with turns of phrase like Goldman Sachs being "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" he's... definitely got an opinion, but what he's doing is journalism, not an opinion piece.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:53 PM on January 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

One to think of it is... well, insider gossip with an editorial voice. If you look at the blog itself, Rubin is being asked to draw on her personal and professional network of conservative politicians, pundits, lobbyists, etc. to provide some context for her own opinion pieces. She also goes to events and speeches put on by conservative organisations, and will report the content, but also say why Congressman X is well-regarded by herself and other conservatives.
posted by holgate at 7:39 PM on January 13, 2015

That's a writer being super passive-aggressive about someone they dislike. They don't want to say journalist or writer or pundit, because they feel those words would dignify the subject.

It's like calling a chef a "cook."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:50 PM on January 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't read Jennifer Rubin but I do read Greg Sargent, who writes the Post's "reported opinion blog with a liberal slant."

Sargent highlights stories that aren't on the radar of the 24/7 news-cycle, but that will almost certainly play a pivotal role somewhere down the line. Occasionally he will break stories.

My takeaway is that pure opinion pieces react to the news. Something happened, and the columnist tells you what they think. So called "reported opinion pieces" lift the veil to some degree and illuminate facts that might otherwise go unreported or unnoticed. Unlike reporters, they are upfront about their political beliefs. Unlike opinion columnists, they give you more than just their beliefs.

Robert Novak was truly the master of this form. I disagreed with his perspective, but I read every column he wrote because you'd walk away more informed. See this for example.
posted by helloimjohnnycash at 8:52 PM on January 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

It is reporting with a particular bias.
posted by 724A at 9:05 PM on January 13, 2015

To me, it sounds like a way of getting around the expectation of verification. "Reported opinion" could be rumour, gossip, or just an opinion (i.e., her own) that is "reported" (yup, it does sound newsier) by virtue of being published.

(Some countries have strong libel and defamation laws and require journalists to make a good-faith effort of verification before reporting news; my understanding is that if the output is called "opinion", those laws don't apply, or not to the same degree, anyway. I guess the U.S. has weaker libel laws, so it may not matter as much domestically, but I wonder whether this may be an attempt to get around this kind of constraint when dealing with international figures [I don't know whether there is reason to be concerned about this]. I think within the U.S., "opinion" is mostly immune to defamation laws because of the First Amendment.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:11 PM on January 13, 2015

The Washington Post (any any other respectable newspaper) does not let anything, even Op-Ed pieces, appear without fact checking. In other words, if there's a quote or confirmable fact in print, even an extreme hit piece, it has been independently confirmed. That's their professional standard.

Ms. Rubin does some independent reporting, though in the five pieces I skimmed of hers, I only found one instance where a quote was called out as hers. Her late 2014 column on Cuba has:

“I saw it on TV,” Graham told me Wednesday night. “He [Obama] finds out about most of his mistakes on TV, and we find out most of his policy choices on TV.” Graham pledges to hold hearings on Cuba, and with the State Department budget under his purview, expect to see Congress exercise the power of the purse. It will be a cold day in Havana before the GOP Senate and House fund a U.S. Embassy there, I predict.

Part fact (powerful Republican Senator Lindsey Graham no doubt said those words or something very close to it) and part punditry.
posted by wnissen at 9:20 PM on January 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

helloimjohnnycash: "Robert Novak was truly the master of this form. I disagreed with his perspective, but I read every column he wrote because you'd walk away more informed."

I was about to mention Novak as well. I certainly disagreed with his perspective, too, and sometimes he was full of crap (or his sources were, or he relied on sources who told him what he wanted to hear), but Novak always did serious legwork to flesh out his stories.

That's in contrast to, say, a Tom Friedman, whose idea of reporting is to ask cab drivers their opinions on global affairs as he shuttles from airport to hotel, or Maureen Dowd, who thinks that her opinions simply count as facts.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:27 PM on January 13, 2015 [5 favorites]