Journalists will often complain that readers don't properly understand the distinction between editorialists and reporters. To be fair, it's often quite difficult to tell. That's not only because of bias in coverage or because the Internet has largely wiped away the compartmentalization of the traditional paper, but because reporters now regularly give their opinions on TV, write "analysis" pieces, and make their ideological preferences clear on social media. Many news outlets -
The Daily Beast,
BuzzFeed, etc. - openly report from a left-wing perspective.
I'm not sure if this kind of transparency is necessarily a bad thing, but whatever the case, an editorial board is still run separately from the newspaper. It offers arguments regarding public policy and culture. Ideally, it publishes op-ed columns by an array of voices with varying points of view, occasionally even challenging its readers. When I was a member of an editorial board, our mission, at least as I saw it, was to offer rigorous, good-faith arguments for whatever point of view we were taking. I never once consulted anyone in the newsroom.
In his
botched sting on
The Washington Post this week, for instance, James O'Keefe demonstrated just how easy it is to either confuse the editorial board with the newsroom or to manipulate readers to confuse them. At some point, however, it also becomes the paper's fault, as well.
What happens when an editorial board goes beyond arguing for liberal positions and debating policy to actively politicking for one party? There's a big difference between political discourse and partisan activism.
Comment: Big surprise: the FBI is stalling on release of the documents: