Agreement question

[Beverly Flanigan]

I've read that British usage tends to give a plural, collectivist sense to
words like "press," along the lines Pat mentioned in another posting.  I
can't think of other examples cited, though, and I can't recall the
source.  Was it on this list?

At 01:00 PM 10/18/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 12:53:25PM -0400, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
> >Of course "the stories the team tell" or "the stories the jury tell"
> >are perfectly good English in some varieties, so I'd go for the
> >plural sense rather than the 's' business.
>
>Yes, but at least in my variety of English, and the idiolects of
>others I've asked, "the stories the press tell" is more
>acceptable than "the stories the team tell", however acceptable
>the latter might be in other varieties. So I'm looking for some
>explanation of why there's this discrepancy.
>
>Jesse Sheidlower