NYT: “Man Bites Dog”; WSJ: “Dog Bites Man”

Remember yesterday’s item about how the N.Y. Times and Wall Street Journal published their very, very different editorials on John Bolton’s resignation? In answer to a Brazilian commenter’s question, the Times is the liberal paper (and therefore anti-Bolton) while the Journal, and most famously its editorial page, is the conservative one.

In today’s papers, there is evidence that those irreconcilable differences also visit the news pages on occasion. Each paper today published an article on a new F.D.A. study measuring the possible increase in suicidal tendencies among young people who take antidepressants. Keep in mind that in the supposed liberal/conservative news split, the conservative Journal is considered to be much more pro-business than the Times.

Here is the Times‘s headline: “Study Finds Medication Raises Suicide Risks in Young Adults.”

And here is the Journal‘s: “Suicidal Thoughts Seem to Abate With Age of Antidepressant Users.”

I don’t want to get all anti-Big Pharma on anybody, but does the Journal‘s headline strike anyone else as a little, um, protective?

These headlines represent a type of editorial interpretation that I am guessing is hard to measure in academic studies of media bias. But to the typical newspaper reader, such differences are so plain as to be nearly comical.