From a buddy in California:
Jonah,
Couldn’t agree with you more regarding your amazement at how people cannot distinguish between editorials and straight journalistic copy. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, “The Times reported” or “According to the Times” and have the reference be straight out of one of the editorials, but quoted as if unbiased fact. It’s like saying I read an essay on Plato and the author “thinks” Plato “meant” X or Y without ever quoting Plato.
I feel the same way when people say, as they are wont to do, that T.S. Eliot said, “This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.” It is true that he wrote those words IN HIS POEM The Hollow Men. He may well have believed the statement, but it is not something he said in casual conversation nor arguably as part of a debate. (Actually, I don’t know if he ever did any of those things, but I do know it is in the poem).
Rant aside though, many of the people pointing out media bias make the same mistake. Does Ann Coulter makes sure to leave editorials out of her searches? Otherwise she is showing a bias on editorial pages (which is not insignificant, but a different phenomenon). This is not to say that were it possible on Lexis Nexis to exclude editorial there would be no bias, just that a lot of the bias is expressed on editorial pages. None of which would be a big deal if people would read the editorials as what they are EDITORIALS.
Ever your servant,