Knowing the difference: fact versus opinion
To the Editor:
A few weeks ago Smoky Mountain News Editor Scott McLeod wrote an interesting article spelling out the differences between folks who choose to read or listen to media sources that provide facts and those who get their news from media that primarily give opinions. There’s nothing wrong with opinions if they are backed up by facts. Otherwise, they’re just noise.
Unfortunately, the explosion of social media in the past two decades which favors opinions (much easier, cheaper and safer than hard-nosed reporting) has obliterated much of the print and online media outlets like local and regional newspapers. McLeod mentions the New York Times, USA Today the Wall Street Journal and local newspapers as solid, respected sources of news. They certainly are. But most people no longer get their news that way. Network news that once gave us Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and Edward R. Murrow have gradually faded with time and have been victims of technology as well. This unfortunate drift could be countered if civics, critical thinking and media literacy courses were mandatory in schools to educate folks on how to sort out fact from fiction. Fortunately, there is renewed interest in these sorts of classes.
The three important issues in this presidential campaign were the economy, immigration and foreign policy. Since the economy seemed to be the deciding issue in the election, I’ll use the economy as an example of how opinions skewed the truth. Even though a recent Harris poll showed that while most people were doing well, themselves, they thought the rest of the country was in a recession, the stock market was down and the unemployment rate was at a 50-year high because this was the “opinion news” they constantly heard on right wing news and social media. The economy is actually doing quite well although many are still not participating. Inflation is down from near 9% in 2022 to 2.4% now and the stock market is at all-time highs. But this doesn’t necessarily mean the cost of bacon and eggs which became stand-ins for inflation in the presidential campaign, will return to 2020 levels. This is the same reason new cars no longer cost $2,000 and gas is not 27 cents a gallon like in the 1950s.
Personal income, on average, has kept up with inflation since Biden became president. In a May 2024 Congressional Budget Office report (the most recent available), the agency concluded that “for households in every quintile (or fifth) of the income distribution, the share of income required to pay for their 2019 consumption bundle decreased, on average, because income grew faster than prices did over that four-year period.” During Biden’s tenure, unemployment averaged 4.16% and 15.8 million jobs were created. These positive facts got lost in the maelstrom of opinion “news” that described Biden’s economy as “terrible” and “a disaster.” So, it’s no surprise that the age-old political strategy of “throw the bums out” worked better than an explanation of how the economy works.
It’s true that neo-liberal policies that sent jobs overseas since the 1980s hollowed out much of the middle class. But this started long before Trump and Harris faced off and both parties share the blame. Biden’s CHIPS, Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law actually injected funds into infrastructure projects and regional economies to start addressing this problem. But again, the party in power is caught holding the bag and without a chair when the music stops. To some degree this also happened to Trump in 2020 with COVID, although his mismanagement of the pandemic also contributed to his loss.
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There is a global move to the right which has also influenced our country’s electorate. So, the pendulum swings, but it was far from a MAGA “realignment” or a “Trump mandate” since he will have paper thin majorities in Congress. Now that the dust has settled on the vote count, it turns out Trump won by just 1.6% over Harris in popular votes (really the best indicator) while Biden beat Trump by 4.5% in 2020 (unless you believe the opinion fueled fiction that the election was stolen). Clearly, Biden didn’t have a mandate, either.
In 1986 Ronald Reagan beat Democrat Walter Mondale by 18.2%. Now that was a mandate! And there were over 4.5 million less votes cast this year than in 2020. A closer look at the numbers reveals that while Trump got more votes than in 2020, Harris lost far more Biden votes. Maybe these voters stayed home because they were frustrated trying to sort out fact from fiction and didn’t know what to believe.
Glenn Duerr
Waynesville
