A week and a half ago, the Carroll County commissioners had one of their periodic meetings with some of the news editors and directors who cover the county.
The exchange between the commissioners and media was extremely pleasant and polite -- until the subject of editorials came up.
The dozen people attending the meeting had finished off the last bits of a light breakfast of hot coffee, orange juice, muffins and bagels. Everyone politely participated in the discussion of how the county's newspapers, broadcasters and cable television access channel could assist the political leaders in spreading the message to conserve drinking water, particularly in South Carroll.
When Commissioner W. Benjamin Brown brought up the subject of editorials, however, the meeting's tone became confrontational.
He was angry about an editorial that had appeared days earlier in the Carroll County Times. The editorial argued that Mr. Brown and his colleague, Richard T. Yates, had not played "by the rules" when they enlarged the county planning commission to seven members.
I will spare you a blow-by-blow of the heated exchanges that followed, but Mr. Brown raised some points in the course of the discussion that are worth dwelling on, particularly as they relate to the writing of editorials -- which is what I do when I am not writing this Sunday column.
Three general areas disturbed him:
* Many editorials cited facts that weren't "correct."
* Editorial writers didn't call him before they wrote editorials on him or on issues he had carved out as his own.
* Newspaper editorial positions were not "responsible."
Editorials are opinion. While they must be grounded in fact, they are solely expressions of The Sun's positions on issues and events of the day. Sometimes, the editorials deal with weighty matters -- the state of democracy. Sometimes, they consider the ephemera of living -- the weather or the sorry state of roadside peaches.
Unlike news articles, which are designed to inform readers with a balanced account of the news, editorials are not intended to be balanced. They aim to advance the newspaper's position.
Obviously, opinion must be based on facts. But different people generally draw different conclusions from the same set of "facts."
Just consider the controversy over the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. It is a fact that the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on that Japanese city. For years, the bombing was justified as a quick means of ending World War II and preventing a prolonged land battle in Japan that would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese casualties. A revisionist group of scholars has advanced the notion the A-bomb was dropped solely to frighten the Soviet Union.
Both sides vehemently argue over the interpretation of the facts about the bombing. The side that ultimately makes the most persuasive case will be the one that prevails in the court of public opinion.
Editorial writing is similar.
Editorial writers pick and choose the facts they need to make their points. When people complain that editorials have their "facts" wrong, they're really complaining that the editorial has only, or mostly, the facts that support its conclusion.
Because editorial writers want to shape opinion, their approach is different from news reporters, whose job is to inform.
To properly report a story, my colleagues in the news department make every effort to talk to -- and quote -- all the pertinent players in a story. Their charge is to be objective and fair.
In contrast, editorial writers want to compose convincing and authoritative essays that will persuade readers to think about an issue in a certain way. Since editorials are the newspaper's opinion, editorial writers don't have the same mission to contact and quote all sides on an issue.
Often, we do call the principals in a story to make sure we understand their positions, or to gather additional facts that may not have been reported, or to gain information to help us arrive at our point of view, but often the information we need to form an opinion and write an editorial is already known. Since editorials are inherently one-sided, we don't have the same pressure as reporters to call everyone involved in a story to get their side.
A reader once complained to one of my colleagues that a particular editorial "was the most one-sided piece" he had ever read. Although the comment was intended to be critical, the writer considered the reaction a compliment.
When politicians complain that a paper is not acting responsibly, nine times out of 10, the paper is criticizing that politician. Like beauty, responsibility is in the eye of the beholder. Most newspapers are interested in promoting social, economic and political measures that solve rather than create problems. But many times, newspapers take on conventional wisdom and advocate unpopular positions on controversial issues.
At their core, editorials are designed to provoke thought. If readers are reacting to editorials, editorial writers take comfort. If an editorial doesn't prompt a reaction, then it has failed. Mr. Brown's strong reaction a week ago Friday warmed the cockles of my heart.
Brian Sullam is The Baltimore Sun's editorial writer in Carroll County.