Does the speaker clearly distinguish among facts, inferences, and opinions?
Does the speaker clearly distinguish among facts, inferences, and opinions? Facts are verifiable units of information that can be confirmed by independent observations. Inferences are projections based on facts. Opinions add personal judgments to inferences: They tell us what someone thinks about a subject. For example, “Mary was late for class today” is a fact. “Mary will probably be late for class again tomorrow” is an inference, “Mary is an irresponsible student” is an opinion. It may sound easy to make these distinctions among facts, inferences, and opinions, but you must be constantly alert to detect confusions of them in the messages you hear.
At the height of the media frenzy during the investigation of President Clinton, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry charged that “in our political culture now, opinion often is pronounced as judgment before there are facts to support opinion.” Walter Isaacson, managing editor of Time magazine, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, supported his charge by pointing out a kind of “echo-chamber” effect in modern journalism. The echo chamber works this way: An unconfirmed rumor is initially published by one news source, and then is repeated by others as though it had been substantiated. Of one such rumor, Isaacson said: Within one day, it had spun around the city of Washington as if it were fact, and it had gotten embellished.
Facts, inferences, and opinions all have a legitimate place in public discourse, but they also can be misused. opnon
Tags: public speaking