Definition of personal opinion

Opinion is the assessment subjective in relation to a given topic. And the personal opinion is, logically, the valuation of an individual.

The reader can think that all opinions are personal. Not exactly, since we have opinions that are not ours (they do not belong to us) but we have copied them from others. It is not easy to have your own personal opinion, that is, that we value something ourselves without imitating or reproducing the ideas of others.

Opinion differs from knowledge. It was the ancient Greeks who differentiated the doxa (opinion) from the episteme (knowledge). Opinion is internal, subjective, variable, most of the time interested and does not have to have a foundation. On the contrary, knowledge is objective, with character general, concrete and has some kind of evidence to back it up.

If someone says I like cakes, it is a particular idea, it is a simple opinion and there may be others totally contrary. That is why it is said that all opinions are respectable. If someone says sweet cakes have sugar, he is not giving an opinion, it is information.

In the journalistic field, an attempt is made to distinguish with clarity what is opinion and what is information. An example of the first case would be the newspaper column, where the writer expresses his assessment of some subject of present. An example of the information is the news, which must be rigorous and answer a series of questions: what happened, when, how and where. Opinions should not be incorporated into the information, at least in an explicit or direct way, since it is inevitable that indirectly or between the lines the journalist conveys his personal opinion.

Throughout a day we hear all kinds of opinions. On beginning, all are respectable, although there are some that have a foundation and rigor and other opinions are more capricious. If someone says that he dislikes such a celebrity and does not give any data or information to argue it, he is expressing his opinion personal, but it would have more value and more sense if he accompanied her with the reasons he has for that famous person to dislike him.

In the media communication there is talk of opinion makers, people of prestige who have a criterion defined on an aspect of reality. Their opinions are heard by citizens and are taken into account, considering them valid, attractive or original.