A classic example of headline editoralizing can be found from Fox News today.
In a story about the Senate passing the $410 billion bill, Fox News made no attempt to hide which way it fell on the issue.
The original headline, as you can see to the right, was:
Senate Passes Huge Spending Bill for Obama
and this bit, which looks like it may have been pasted from a pre-vote story:
The Senate was scheduled to vote Tuesday and send the $140 billion bill chock full of lawmakers’ pet projects and significant increases in food aid for the poor, energy research and other programs to President Obama.
To the network’s credit, it updated the headline, rather quickly, to something resembling objectivity:
Senate Passes Huge Spending Bill,
Heads to Obama for Signature
And the new subheading reads:
The Senate approved the measure by voice after it cleared a key procedural hurdle by a 62-35 vote.
Sixty votes were required to shut down debate.
As the24-hour news networks and online operations continue to rush to publish (or in this case, republish), I can only suspect more bias will creep into headlines, but will then be… edited out.