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Comment by rdxm | Hacker News Reader

We are down to like one or two remaining professional journalism shops (FT and Economist, imho).

Sad to see once decent, thoughtful operations like WSJ, NY Times, WaPo, basically turned into conflict generation drivel producers.

Edit to add: I don't mean to ignore efforts like Pro Publica, but they are very small ops and don't really move the needle readership-wise.

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I would argue that the economist takes much stronger editorial stances than other publications allow. They haven’t given any space to or said any kind anything about Russia in the last 10 years, nor have they given any space to the pro-Brexit side of the debate. They do great reporting inside their editorial stance, but they’re a long ways from “Just the facts, ma’am.”

> They haven’t given any space to or said any kind anything about Russia in the last 10 years, nor have they given any space to the pro-Brexit side of the debate.

Signs of a quality publication, surely? There's not a lot of papers saying nice things about a mafia oligarchy state unless they've been paid to do so, and the pro-Brexit arguments are mostly nonsense.

The economist has firmly located itself in an economic and socially liberal policy position, but they're willing to look at other cogently argued positions.

> mafia oligarchy state

Could be talking about Russia, the U.S., or China at this point, really.

> the pro-Brexit arguments are mostly nonsense

Well, the Economist will assiduously avoid any examination of how the common currency & market are handmaidens for austerity imposed on the peripheral countries to ensure bondholders are always made whole in the EU financial core, that's for sure. Not sure what makes this point "nonsense" though.

Not sure that you point relates to Brexit to be fair, even if I find little else to disagree with

UK uses Euros? TIL!

That argument may have been valid for Grexit, but UK austerity is entirely native Tory policy, and the primacy of bondholders is pretty much global doctrine (see Argentina pari passu fiasco).

Anyway, that has zero bearing on how Brexit has been conducted, and especially on the opposition to free movement of people.

> There's not a lot of papers saying nice things about a mafia oligarchy state unless they've been paid to do so

There was one, called "The Economist in the year X" for all X such that whichever combination of oligarchs, mafia and security services are in power happen to be friendly to Western business interests.

> The economist has firmly located itself in an economic and socially liberal policy position

They are the voice of Empire and always have been.

http://exiledonline.com/exile-classic-the-economist-the-worl...

What is there to say about pro Russia or Brexit?

I have met some Brittain people yesterday and they also didn't have anything positive to say about that.

I have no idea who this guy is or if his ideas are valid but here's his 10 reasons why Brexit is good

https://dominicfrisby.com/news/ten-reasons-im-voting-to-leav...

> I have no idea who this guy is or if his ideas are valid but

Then why are you sharing/promoting his viewpoint?

There are endless starting points for any debate, picking the right one is critical.

I shared it because they all sounded like extremely reasonable points. They didn't sound crazy or irrational. The question was "are there any positive things to say about brexit" and the answer is "yes". Does that mean Brexit = good? I have no idea but the answer seems clearly not as simple as anti-brexit people seem to claim

I agree. I had Bloomberg on that list but it's gotten steadily worse over the last few years. Some parts of WSJ and NYT are still pretty good, but they're flooded by drivel and hard to find.

>> Sad to see once decent, thoughtful operations like WSJ, NY Times, WaPo, basically turned into conflict generation drivel producers.

I'm not sure that's a fair description of news orgs. The world's fairly complex and you're going to end up with slant one way or another however you try to describe it.

What about Reuter’s?

So many abbreviations I had a hard time following you.

What's FT?

Financial Times

The Financial Times.

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