COLUMN: You can't 'fact check' opinions

One of the constant complaints I receive in my role as managing editor of the Inter Lake is that letters to the editor we have published contain inaccuracies.

Folks, that’s a matter of opinion.

What the letters usually contain is a different interpretation of facts, not an incorrect set of facts.

Let’s take an obvious and extreme example related to the president. Whether you like it or not, some readers think Barack Obama is a Muslim, and they sometimes want to say so in a letter to the editor.

This obviously aggravates Democrats, and they will write to me to complain that Obama isn’t a Muslim because he says he is a Christian and because he attended a Christian church in Chicago. This is enough evidence for them, and they take it at face value.

But others don’t. They point to things like Obama’s father coming from a Muslim family, or Obama being raised in Indonesia by a Muslim step-father and attending a school where he was registered as being a Muslim, as evidence that there is more to the story. Or they point to Obama’s statements through the years such as his telling the New York Times that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” Those “facts” lead them to the “opinion” that Obama is a Muslim.

It’s not up to me to protect readers from opinions held by other people. I’m firmly of the belief that all of us should try to understand the thinking of our neighbors and fellow citizens rather than simply label it stupid or erroneous.

I do, on the other hand, sometimes label an assertion in a letter as opinion just to emphasize the point that, for instance, none of us can really know what is in Barack Obama’s heart except Barack Obama. Therefore, whether we label him a Christian or a Muslim, it’s still an opinion based on different interpretation of the evidence, or possibly based on nothing at all except a gut feeling. Opinions don’t have to be true; that’s why they are opinions.

So now that we’ve gotten that hugely controversial example out of the way, let’s consider a much more mundane dispute over Montana politics.

Back on June 19, the Daily Inter Lake ran a guest opinion by Ryan Zinke about two votes he cast in the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on federal public land policy.

Rep. Zinke said that he had voted against his own Republican Party by voting no “on a bill that would transfer away ownership of two million acres of U.S. Forest Service land.” In fact, the bill did even more than that. According to Congress.gov, H.R. 3650 authorized the Department of Agriculture to convey to each and every state up to 2 million acres of Forest Service land in order to increase timber production. And remember, Zinke voted no on this one.

On the same day, Zinke voted in support of the Self-Sufficient Community Lands Act (H.R. 2316), which according to Congress.gov, “Directs the Department of Agriculture to establish the community forest demonstration area in a state, consisting of National Forest System (NFS) land, at the request of an Advisory Committee appointed by the governor to manage such land in that state.”

Here’s where it goes from fact to opinion. Rep. Zinke wrote an op-ed, which was published in the Inter Lake on Sunday, June 19, in which he declared flatly, “I never have voted to give away, sell, or transfer your lands and I never will.”

Several readers and his Democratic opponent, Denise Juneau, thought otherwise. Juneau, who as state superintendent of public instruction sits on the Montana Land Board, sent out a campaign press release that said, “Congressman Zinke votes to sell off America’s public lands.” She said the bill Zinke supported “proposes giving away up to 200,000 acres per national forest.”

A letter that ran alongside Zinke’s op-ed on June 19 lumped H.R. 2316 and H.R. 3650 together and flatly declared, “The bills would legislate the transfer of millions of acres of public lands and jeopardize the health of America’s national forest system, fish and wildlife habitat, and public access to quality hunting and fishing.”

Technically, this is not true. H.R. 2316 established a pilot program that would give states the opportunity to manage some federal land, but it did not transfer ownership. The question, of course, is whether transferring management is the virtual equivalent of transferring ownership. Some say yes; some say no — but should I make that decision for you?

If I wanted to dictate right and wrong, I could refuse to print letters whose conclusions I disagree with, but to me that would be plain wrong.

Most letters to the editor are about political issues, and it would be too easy for an editor such as myself to judge conclusions in letters based on my own opinions and thus block certain points of view from publication. In fact, I believe many editors do this on a regular basis. I choose not to be one of them. I will always err on the side of allowing people to draw their own conclusions and prove them to the best of their ability. If they bend the rules of rhetoric in service of their argument, I expect readers to be able to sort that out for themselves as part of their responsibility as citizens.

As for the Zinke-Juneau dispute, a few days ago I received an email from Humberto Sanchez touting his article on Ballotpedia in which he looks at the issue and concludes that “Juneau’s claim is false” when she says that Zinke has “equivocated” on sale of public lands.

That’s all well and good, and Sanchez is welcome to his opinion, but if you are letting someone else check your facts for you, then you are probably not thinking for yourself. Although Ballotpedia claims to be committed to “neutral and objective documentation and analysis,” that claim can’t be accepted on face value either.

For me, the answer is simple: Withhold nothing; question everything — and for goodness sake, keep reading!

Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake.