Are Opinions Credible?

It is difficult to think of where I should begin my discussion of opinion editorials and JSTOR Daily articles, as the two genres are vastly different. Though I am happy to note that both are relatively short. It seems to me that a JOSTOR Dally article is an abridged version of an academic article, and an opinion editorial is simply an opinionated discussion of a topic.

In all honesty, I absolutely hate opinion editorials. They are a big part of what is wrong with our Internet sharing culture today. It's the perfect genre to pass misinformation and insinuations as facts. Although maybe I'm just brainwashed by the five paragraph essay and it simply doesn't meet my standards for rhetoric. One of my biggest issues is how the genre establishes credibility. A prime example of my point is "Liberals Are the Sort of People Who..." from Townhall. This opinion article does NOTHING to establish its credibility with you or me. All it does is throw around baseless accusations of how liberals are hypocrites, how they hate christianity, and how Hillary Clinton deserves jail time. The problem is that this editorial provides no evidence, no examples, and no statistics to back up its claims! So the only people that this could possibly establish credibility with are those that already share these opinions. I'll admit that, yes, an emotional argument can be very effective, but only if your audience can empathize with the emotions you are conveying, and frankly I have no empathy for the anger in this piece. You've got to wonder, is this useful rhetoric? The greatest pieces of rhetoric have been used to change people's opinions. So what's the point of rhetoric that won't captivate a new audience?

On the other hand, JSTOR Daily articles are an absolute pleasure to read. "Where American Public Schools Came From" claims that while many people in the United States are skeptical of public education at the college level, there is little to no argument of providing tax payed education for K through 12. The article then establishes its credibility with logos, describing the history of how public schooling came to be law. The article doesn't use overt opinions like "Liberals Are the Sort of People Who...", but it does have a bias. The article describes how there was arguments about if K through 12 schooling should be public and tax payed, something that we currently take for granted. So if someone compared it to our current argument over public college, they may be convinced that public college could do the same amount of good that public K through 12 did. So even though the article doesn't say, "Public College is good", and you have to read between the lines to get that message, it's still more convincing than the editorial that told you "Liberals are bad", simply because the article effectively established credibility.

I guess I should cut opinion articles some slack. After all, JSTOR Daily articles can be very dry in comparison because the author will distance themselves from the topics they discuss. One opinion editorial that I found to be an enjoyable read was "Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?" Partially because I do agree with many of the opinions stated, but I do also believe there is an objective reason that this editorial is good. This editorial discusses Donald Trump's history with corruption, most notably Trump University. This editorial shares many of the faults of "Liberals are the Sort of People Who...", such as a lack of solid evidence, but it does describe how it is unable to provide evidence due to the lack of journalistic research conducted by media, which somewhat increases the editorials credibility. Over all, it's great to see the author's personal engagement in the subject. As I stated earlier, a problem with opinion editorials is that they only work if the audience can empathize with the author's emotions, but if they do manage to empathize, the opinion editorial can have a larger impact on the audience than a JSTOR Daily article does. I believe I'll always trust in the JSTOR Daily article more because of its credibility, but hopefully I can still find a few opinion editorials that will strike a chord with me.