There was a little bias on display today in my morning News & Observer (as usual, I can’t find it on their website). Nothing new there, really, but this example is pretty interesting.
Here’s a quote from an NAACP official that ran on page 4A of the paper in a story headlined “Tea party fires back at NAACP” (my emphasis):
“There’s no room for that kind of vitriolic language in a civilized Democratic society,” Shelton said.
Now, this was either the reporter intentionally using a capital D, which would really be bad, or inadvertently doing so, which reveals a deep unconscious bias.
Or was it a copy editor on some desk somewhere (it was a Tribune Washington Bureau story) between Washington and Raleigh who a) added the capital D just because, or b) didn’t notice that the reporter, Kathleen Hennessy, or one of her editors had added or left it in?
No matter how it got there and stayed there, there is no good answer to those questions.
