Survey: Many Americans Can’t Tell Fact From Opinion

A new poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center suggests people are having difficulty telling the difference between fact and opinion.

According to The Hill, people participating in the Pew study were provided five statements, including “spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid make up the largest portion of the U.S. Federal budget,” and five opinion statements, including “Democracy is the greatest form of government.”

They were also two statements that were ambiguous.

Just 26 percent of the adults surveyed correctly identified all five factual statements as factual, according to the study.

And just 35 percent identified all five opinion statements as opinion.

Pew also found that participants “were more likely to classify both factual and opinion statements as factual when they appealed most to their side.”

Reuters reports the main portion of Pew's survey polled 5,035 adult Americans aged 18 and above in February and March. The study was intended to determine if respondents could differentiate between factual information and opinion statements in news stories.

Participants were given five factual statements such as "spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid make up the largest portion of the U.S. federal budget," and five opinion statements such as "democracy is the greatest form of government." They were asked to identify which ones were factual and which were opinions.