I am disappointed with you today, says a reader following my piece last Friday on how to evaluate Prof Makau Mutua’s criticism of Deputy President William Ruto.
“Prof Makau [Mutua] has every right to speak about governance, his expressions notwithstanding. He is a darling to many and those who feel offended shouldn’t read his column. More so, those who are aggressive (sic) should seek redress from the court. You better not be their advocate.”
But the one I really want to respond to today is the reader who says columnists are not reporters; their business is to peddle opinion. “So what is your problem, Mr Public Editor? Don’t be a spoilsport. Let’s enjoy Makau raking the DP ‘over the coals’.”
Although the business of columnists is to peddle opinion, they still need facts and evidence to provide crucial support for their opinion. Opinion that is not rooted in facts and evidence is worthless. It’s mere assertions, speculation, rumour mongering, gossip. It’s not helpful to readers looking for insight, understanding, interpretation and analysis of the matter in hand.
Columnist should save opinion unsupported by facts or evidence for their nyama choma or beer-drinking club, not the opinion pages of the Nation. An opinion not rooted in facts and evidence is not only worthless but, as some wiseacre once said, like an &#%hole; everybody has one (and they usually stink). An opinion worth reading has to stand out from other opinions that anybody, like an &#%hole , can have.
Columnists should base their opinion not just on their feelings, reactions or half-truths but an accurate presentation of the applicable facts and evidence. It’s the facts and evidence that give weight to opinions. Without the facts and evidence, opinion are just &#%holes.
Indeed, when NMG hires columnists, it expects them to provide understanding of the issues. The NMG editorial policy describes this as “analysis and interpretative journalism to help our audiences and readers better understand the issues that are part of their everyday lives”.
Columnists, in the words of the NMG editorial policy, should offer informed debate, intelligent expression of thought and perspectives, cogently argued and reasoned opinions. Their opinions should be sober, balanced, and not strident or shrill, not inflammatory or hate-mongering.
Columnists should also use the space given to them to inform, educate and enlighten readers, not propagandise and persuade them to support some hidden causes.
For all those reasons, Nation columnists need to provide true and verifiable facts and strong evidence on which to anchor their opinion if their writing is to be useful to the reader. Even when giving their personal reaction, evaluation or reflection, they still need to back them up with facts and evidence.
In this context, it’s important to distinguish between facts and opinion. A fact is a statement that can be proven true or false while an opinion is an expression of a person’s feelings, which cannot be proven true or false.
Hence, it is important for the reader to know the facts upon which a columnist bases his opinion. He can then decide, on the basis of the facts presented to support the opinion, whether the opinion is valid and accordingly make his own judgment or conclusion.
Readers need the underlying facts, if any, that the columnist uses to arrive at his opinion. If columnists only offer opinion without the underlying facts that give rise to the opinion, then the opinion is not helpful to the reader. It’s unusable, worthless propaganda.
And when confronted with an opinion, the reader need to ask: Is this opinion anchored on facts? If it is, are the facts true, reliable? That’s the only way the reader can effectively judge the columnist’s message. Otherwise, the columnist has a free hand to drown the reader in propaganda, mere assertions, speculation, rumour mongering, gossip. That’s not the purpose of the Nation opinion pages.
The Public Editor is an independent news ombudsman who handles readers’ complaints on editorial matters including accuracy and journalistic standards. Email: [email protected] . Call or text 0721989264.
