I was a newspaper editor for a lot of years, and I can tell you that finding all the bias that might appear in print is a tough job. It’s especially so when you’re an editor who has concluded that bias is pretty much the standard modus operandi of the media, and you’ve made it your job to at least to try to expunge it in your little part of the media.

Occasionally, something will get through, and you’ll be sitting at the breakfast table drinking coffee and reading your own paper when some obvious bias that got by you will just hit you smack in the face.

I’m giving the benefit of the doubt and imagining this is what happened this morning when the editors of The News & Observer looked at their Triangle&Co. page. This is what was there:

About 200 protesters, as the photo caption says, gathered to protest Arizona’s new immigration law, which was rendered pretty much toothless by a federal judge earlier this week. OK, that’s a legitimate news story, sure. And the editor needed a nice piece of art for the section front, so he ran the above photo. Again, OK.

But look at what is called the overline on that photo: “Protesters Want Justice in Arizona.” One’s first reaction might be, “Who doesn’t?” But then it becomes clear that the copy editor who wrote that overline was making several subjective judgments.

First: that there is injustice currently in Arizona, and these protesters are right to want to replace it with justice.

Second: that what these protesters want is in actual fact justice, whereas those who disagree with them in fact want injustice.

Third: the copy editor’s acceptance of the absurd notion that people who are guilty of breaking the law (that’s why they call them illegal aliens) are justified in defining justice as allowing them to continue to break the law.

And fourth: that the people of Arizona are being unjust by trying to enforce their own laws, which are no different in breadth and scope than federal laws.

This was a problem with an easy solution. Why not just play it straight and run this as an overline: “Protesters March Against Arizona Law”?

Why that didn’t happen is a question for the editors.

Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper Carolina Journal.