We live in a saturated age of opinion, writes Ciarán Murray from Olas, but whose should we trust? Legacy media businesses still have a fundamental role to play.
Opinion sections in traditional media were born out of the ideals of freedom of speech, expression and public discourse. Long before social media, they were journalism’s closest approximation of participatory media – spaces where individuals, not institutions, could shape narratives, challenge norms and contribute to the political, social and cultural conversation.
But today, these spaces are under strain. Not because people are more opinionated and that is bad, but because the opinion section itself has become politicised, commercialised and strategically weaponised.
“If the media is becoming more participatory than ever, then we must protect its integrity”
Jeff Bezos’ overhaul of The Washington Post’s opinion pages to limit ideological breadth, is one high profile example of a move that underscores how easily “perspective” can become policy.
Yes, opinions are free, but when the platform becomes narrow, compromised, or co-opted by political or corporate interests, we’re forced to confront difficult questions:
- What counts as a “valid” opinion, and who gets to decide?
- What tools exist beyond editorial judgment and engagement metrics?
- And more deeply, can we objectively vet something that is, by nature, unverifiable?
In a climate of declining trust and rising misinformation, the role and reliability of published opinion demands urgent rethinking.
The rise of opinions and why legacy media still matters
We live in an age saturated with opinion. From cable news panels to substack newsletters, comment threads to podcast episodes, there are now more platforms than ever for people to share their views. This, in many ways, gives power to people. It’s an expansion of who gets to speak and be heard. But as opinion has become more accessible, it inevitably becomes harder to trust.
Take the 2024 UK general election cycle for example, dubbed the “first podcast election” where audio platforms were weaponised to influence public sentiment. Political podcast downloads surged by over 50%, and Spotify reported a 49% rise in total hours spent listening to politics podcasts in the UK over the past year.
In the US, we saw this taken a step further. During the 2024 election cycle, personalities and influencers played a significant role in shaping public debates. Donald Trump appeared on at least 14 personality-driven podcasts, collectively amassing over 68 million views on YouTube alone. These appearances weren’t just interviews, but strategic media placements designed to bypass traditional media scrutiny and connect directly with a predominantly young, male, digitally-native audience increasingly disengaged from legacy news.
While podcasts – often informal and unmoderated – are a persuasive form of opinion-sharing, there is sometimes a risk of the editorial oversight that makes traditional journalism verifiable.
This only heightens the role and responsibility of legacy media. In a media environment overflowing with commentary and perspectives, the traditional opinion section carries a particular weight. It is, or ought to be, the place where arguments are tested, facts are sourced, affiliations are disclosed, and the public interest is served.
Because while anyone can hold a mic or post a thread, not every opinion shapes global markets, policy frameworks or public trust. Some of the most impactful opinion pieces have come from unexpected places, highlighting emerging economies, overlooked technologies, or quiet use cases that never make the front page, but ultimately define the future. Opinion pages in mainstream outlets still carry that influence, which is why how they’re curated, edited and platformed matters more than ever.
Redefining participatory media
If the media is becoming more participatory than ever, then we must protect its integrity.
The multiplicity of voice and opinions must not come at the cost of public trust. Discourse is important, but participatory media isn’t just about more voices, but better ones.
So how do we assess opinion in a way that preserves its subjectivity, but ensures a level of integrity? Especially when by design, they are unverifiable?
We start with the basics: editorial judgment, ethical standards, and a commitment to grounding opinion in fact. The best opinion pages are guided by a few essential guardrails, that contributors are transparent about their affiliations, that arguments are evidence-based, and that critique is constructive, not conspiratorial.
A good opinion piece is not a personal brand pitch or a vehicle for soft advocacy. It’s an argument. It’s a perspective shaped by experience, yes, but anchored in something concrete. Facts, citations, legal frameworks, on-the-ground use cases. Opinion, in this sense, doesn’t exist in opposition to fact, it’s built on top of it.
Editors already play a crucial role in maintaining this balance. But as the volume and velocity of content accelerates, they can’t and shouldn’t be the only line of defence. That’s where new tools and frameworks come in.
Building tools for trust
Technology won’t save opinion journalism, but it can help reinforce its foundation. In an age of content saturation, AI-generated commentary and performative outrage, we need more than editorial instinct. We need tools that support transparency, credibility and context.
Some already exist. Prediction markets and reputation systems attempt to crowdsource insight, rewarding those whose judgments prove accurate over time. On social media, tools like fact-checkers and Community Notes aim to provide corrective context. But these systems, while well-intentioned, often fall short.
Community Notes, for example, has been praised as a more democratic alternative to top-down fact-checking. Now, in its latest iteration, X is piloting a new feature that highlights posts where users with differing viewpoints agree, an effort to build momentum around “widely shared” opinions. But consensus isn’t always the same as truth, nor is agreement a guarantee of insight. Popularity and agreement may soften polarisation, but they don’t necessarily elevate originality, expertise or accuracy.
That’s what’s missing – tools that help us assess opinion when it’s subjective, long-term, or unverifiable, the kind of commentary that can’t be fact-checked in real time but still shapes what we think, believe and do.
Here, social science offers something more promising. Methods that ask people not just “what do you think?”, but “what do you think others will say?” can help surface surprisingly well-informed perspectives, even when no clear ‘right’ answer exists. These systems reward honesty and self-awareness, not just popularity. And they create room for calibrated contrarian voices who are quietly, consistently right when it counts.
Used wisely, such tools could give editors better signals. They could help readers tune into insight over volume. And they could keep the opinion section doing what it’s meant to do, which is to inform, challenge, and elevate the public conversation.
This isn’t about replacing editors or turning writing into math. It’s about using better signals – social, reputational, predictive – to help us distinguish between what’s interesting and what’s merely amplified.
A future for opinion worth defending
We are not short on opinions. We’re short on frameworks to assess them without flattening them. We don’t need fewer voices, we need stronger standards, sharper tools and shared expectations for what opinion writing is for.
Opinion is still one of the most human forms of media. It allows us to make sense of chaos, to build narratives across differences, to test ideas in public before they become law or regulation. But if we want to preserve that, we have to protect it from misinformation, mediocrity, manipulation and misuse.
The rise of opinion isn’t the problem; it’s an opportunity. Now we need to build the guardrails that ensure it remains something we can trust.
Top image: Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
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