The reason we don't get that as much in the US is that a lot of journalism is modeled on the wire service piece, which is meant as generic copy that almost any newspaper can reprint. It's what journalism prof Jay Rosen calls "The View From Nowhere".
One important distinction, also mostly lost on American journalism, is that viewpoint is different than bias. It's easier to see in the foreign press, though. The Economist, for example, has a very clear viewpoint, but they visibly work hard not to be biased.
For example, I can give novice programmers a reasonably unbiased overview of the strengths and weaknesses of various programming languages, even ones I don't favor myself. I can also talk happily about the flaws in the languages I personally prefer.
I see people do this pretty often with things like cities they've lived in, restaurants, books, and movies. Anybody who works at it a bit can do it. You just have to be able to distance yourself a bit from your preferences, to learn how to make an intellectual case that cuts against your biases.
So yeah, I've read The Economist for something like 30 years, and I think they do a good job of having a strong viewpoint without skewing their coverage much because of it. In particular, I think they keep their opinion-y activities well contained in the leaders and regular columns. The news still has a fair bit of viewpoint (e.g., numerical, humanistic, skeptical, and, well, economics-focused), but rarely do I find them shading the facts or juggling the numbers to force an outcome, which is what I mean by bias.
Do you think TE will write an article focused on crazy things said by leaders of the EU? Never in a million years. They will happily devote large amounts of coverage to statements by politicians they disagree with, however.
I also think "crazy things said by leaders of the EU" is an odd thing to ask for, as it is basically asking them to import your bias as to what's "crazy". I certainly see them printing things from EU leaders that I'd call crazy, if that helps. I also wouldn't call them deferential toward anybody; they're on average quite skeptical of politicians' claims.
I note that you didn't answer my question. Maybe you could? And let me ask another: you only respond here on a relatively small set of stories. Is that because you are biased? Or just because you have a viewpoint?
The idea that there's no difference is poisonous to dialog and, ultimately, democracy. If all statements due to differences in viewpoint can be invalidated as biased, then there's no reason to talk to or learn from people with different viewpoints. All verbal interaction in that view becomes rhetorical combat.
If, on the other hand, we all come from different viewpoints but can overcome (or at least usefully manage) our biases, then dialog is how we work out a common understanding.
For example, as a youth I had no interest in team sports. American culture, though, crams team sports down your throats. It's just assumed that you'll be a partisan for some team, and you're treated as weird/defective if you don't. This was irritating to me, and eventually I developed a deep bias against all of it.
Older, and having lived for years among nerds, I still maintain my viewpoint: I have no interest in team sports. I still agree with this:
But because nobody's been a dick to me about this for years, and because I've become friends with people who do love sports, I've mostly lost my bias. I no longer bristle when the topic comes up. I can give a reasonable accounting of why sports fans love sports, and I can give a balanced list of the social costs and benefits. I still have a mild bias against the topic, but can recognize and override it.
The next-biggest use for me is evaluating other people as sources. I'm more likely to trust somebody if they display awareness of their biases, and especially if they're able to say nuanced things that at times cut against those biases. Because if they aren't wrestling with their own biases, they've outsourced the job to me.
Is that helpful? If not, try asking some sort of question, because you've left me just guessing at your objections here.
The reason they have different connotations is because twisting the facts is considered bad and having an opinion is not.
But as you say, that doesn't mean you have to twist the facts.
The TE has, I think, become worse under the new editor. It used to be better. A simple example of what I'm talking about is this:
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21708680-smooth-brexit...
The article argues that Britain is being "boorish" towards the EU and doesn't understand its neighbours. It quotes Hollande:
in recent days François Hollande, Jean-Claude Juncker and Angela Merkel have all expressed concern at the noises wafting across the sea. “There must be a price,” the French president told a European gathering in Paris on October 6th.
But they are engaged in extremely selective quoting. The full Hollande quote is "There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price" which makes the EU sound significantly worse: what kind of supposed allies state flat out that they must threaten countries that leave? It makes the EU sound like some sort of mafia. Other news outlets reported the full quote but The Economist did not. They chose to slice out the worst sounding parts entirely in order to push their article's viewpoint: UK bad, Europe good.
I wouldn't trust a single thing I read in the modern TE about the EU, immigration or Russia. On topics the editor cares about they're just a more intellectual sounding version of Fox News.
For example, his latest piece discusses areas where political coverage should not be neutral:
http://pressthink.org/2016/10/campaign-press-not-neutral-tow...
Saying, e.g., that they should be for deliberation and voter participation, while being against opacity and demagoguery.
And I strongly recommend his critiques of the View from Nowhere. E.g.: http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-question...
Are the extra voters brought into the process as informed as the voters that sought out participation with no outside push?
But my take is that yes, it's still clear cut. Becoming informed doesn't happen in a vacuum. I wasn't particularly informed when I started voting at 18. But being a regular voter and wanting to do it well has forced a lot of my activity around getting and staying informed.
Democracies are dynamic processes. We're always absorbing new, underinformed voters and turning them into better ones. If some potential voters are underinformed, the solution isn't to discourage them from voting; it's to educate them. And journalists are in the business of informing, so I think Rosen reasonably leaves out here that journalists are already openly in favor of informing voters.
For instance, you can mock vote, and then see whether that politician lives up to your expectations over some period of time.
As an example, they could just not talk about the people harmed by free trade. But quite often they do. Consequently, their editorial pieces regularly recommend taxing those who win on trade deals to help retrain those who lose their jobs.
They don't always succeed at being biased, but I think they do a better job precisely because they're explicit about their viewpoint. I prefer this to American "view from nowhere" journalism, where the effort to subtract viewpoint makes it harder to discern and excise bias.
It still manifestly fails in this on repeated occasions (virtually anything associated with limits, though that may be changing). I'd read the magazine for some decades before running across the prospectus itself, here, by the way:
http://www.economist.com/node/1873493
Which lays out that a paper called The Economist to be published "which will contain":
_First.—ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day—political events—and parliamentary discussions; and particularly to all such as relate immediately to revenue, commerce, and agriculture; or otherwise affect the material interests of the country._
Long before this I'd noted that the slant of the leaders was often directly contradicted by the companion full stories further back in the magazine, most especially from foreign correspondents in developing countries -- India, China, and the various African states particularly.
Again: there are some grounds on which to consider The Economist fairly good, and its companion The Financial Times as well. Simply on a criterion of mentioning substantial figures, both rate quite highly amongst mainstream periodicals, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...
My view is that the paper has a specific bias and that that should be considered. In particular, it results in an inaccurate framing for economic and policy issues.