Opinion vs. facts

Hey there, Daily Herald editors, I looked up your mission statement. It reads: "Our mission is to be the leading provider of news, information and business solutions for suburban Chicago." In addition, you, like most print media, routinely run a page entitled "Your Opinion." However, with regards to your mission statement on that page, somewhere, should be the definition of the word "opinion." Here it is:

noun: opinion, a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

And when you do, please use boldface and italics to emphasize the "not necessarily based on fact or knowledge" part.

Why? You ask. Take, for example, Doug Whitlock's piece published on Jan. 24. To him Biden's accomplishments are nothing but a "joke or a laugh." Now that's certainly his "opinion." And true enough, he doesn't provide any facts or knowledge to back up his "opinion."

However, in deference to your mission statement, that letter doesn't provide any real "news and information," but some of your readers may take his opinion as news or information because it was "printed in the paper" regardless of the fact that it appeared in the Your Opinion page.

So, please, start tagging more of these rants with a qualifier such as this, "Dear Reader, the Daily Herald would like to remind you that certain opinions are not based on fact nor knowledge."

James J. Paskiewicz

Algonquin