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Comment by gcv | Hacker News Reader

Your comment simply says that your politics don't align with The Economist's.

I personally find the "he said, she said" style of reporting that purports to give a fair account of all sides intolerable and hypocritical. It often allows complete idiots to air their opinions in the name of presenting a "different" view. This lets the reporter subtly influence the reader while preserving the illusion of impartiality.

The Economist is a highly biased newspaper. Unlike nearly all other publications aspiring to high-brow status, it displays its biases openly.

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My main complaint with the Economist (as a subscriber) is that it doesn't display it's biases openly - it often presents controversial economic or social positions as settled fact in a neutral style. If you didn't know the subject it was writing on you would think they were presenting the orthodox position.

If you didn't catch The Economist's biases on a cursory reading of one issue, that's on you. Simply skimming one of the leader opinion pieces and comparing it to, e.g., a Krugman column, should tell you that the authors would come to blows.

Besides, what is an "orthodox" position? Whose?

I'm not talking about their overall world view I'm talking about their "Coffee growing in Guatamala" or "Cement production in the far east" articles - the ones where they are providing information on a relatively obscure subject. The articles present very matter of fact tones when in reality they are often reporting on one side of genuinely contraversial issues.

I prefer my reading to ignore the "teach the controversy" camp.

I'm not talking about lame "1 dissenter out of a million style" fake controversy, I'm talking about when experts are split 50/50 on an issue.

it doesn't display it's biases openly

It actually does for some of them, in its prospectus, mentioned by me earlier in this thread.

http://www.economist.com/node/1873493

Wikipedia's article has more on the Newspaper's history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist

>>Your comment simply says that your politics don't align with The Economist's.

May I enquire as to your stance on the corn laws?

>>it displays its biases openly.

Nope. It claims to speak from the perspective of economists but instead is pushing a panglosian, unilateral free trade agenda. The world view has many internal contradictions (OP notes their treatment of good and evil countries, China is for some reason in the good category despite working hard to disrupt US hegemony while other countries that verbally protest are labeled evil), I can only assume they have sinister motives or are mentally retarded. Much like Fox News.

> It often allows complete idiots to air their opinions in the name of presenting a "different" view.

There, you just described the economist.

Okay, jokes apart... My 'problem' is that most mainstream media, doesn't consider the economist biased. I didn't consider the economist biased in the past. When I did, I stopped my subscription because it had nothing to offer: I knew beforehand what am I going to read on (almost) any given situation.

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