Welcome to 'Le Monde' in English | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to 'Le Monde' in English

lemonde.fr

351 pointsaaraujo002270 comments

Le monde diplomatique created an chart showing the owners of main French medias (in French unfortunately)[1], the data is available on their Github account[2].

[1] https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA [2] https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais

To be able to know who owns what (critically but not only in the media) should be the basis of every democracy.

Currently Le Monde diplomatique (https://mondediplo.com/) is the only world news I'm reading, it's always a joy to get it in the mail, and I really appreciate the quality of journalism and analyses.

Worth reading inded if you believe in getting different perspectives to get a vague idea of what's really going on.

However, fair warning: Le Monde diplomatique is heavily biased reporting.

I love LMD, but I have to agree with the bias warning here. LMD makes no effort to be impartial. There are definitely things I strongly disagree with in LMD, and I'm still looking for a similar paper with different opinions in my news consumption.

I mean, what geopolitical conduit isn't this days? And hasn't it ever been thus? Not saying this is a bad thing, or a good thing; that's just the way things are, right?

I don't mind a source having biases in the sense of a lean, everyone has biases. What winds me up is when they knowingly and intentionally skew their reporting not just to reflect that bias but to promote it and radicalise their viewership.

Take the BBC for example, they're as close as I can get to a neutral source but even they have a somewhat left wing bias. It's pretty mild though and they do have some somewhat right wing voices. As a moderate right winger I find it absolutely fine and easy to take into account. The Economist is great, and even the Guardian is worth reading from time to time. It's good to know what people with different opinions are thinking and why.

I cannot stomach Fox News though. Those people are deranged, it's practically RT for America. The Daily Mail here in the UK is almost as bad, they knowingly and regularly distort climate science data to misrepresent it for example. I'm a climate optimist, but the DM blatantly falsifies results. I still go to their web sites to check out how they are reporting things from time to time, but they're not just right leaning, they're constructing an all out ultraconservative fantasy reality.

Maybe I should try the Express or Telegraph, they might reflect my political views better but I can't be bothered. I find a close echo chamber for my own opinions rather boring. The nearest thing I consume to how I think is the Economist but they always keep it interesting with thoughtful analysis of current events and even post mortems when they get things wrong. They also sometimes give air time to opposing views.

Maintaining my views while constantly being pulled leftward by at least some of the media I consume to be a constructive dynamic. I don't always agree with them, but at lest I'm well informed on why. For some reason left media tends to be much more centrist these days than right media which is ultra radicalised. Back in my youth it was the other way around. Left media used to be so bonkers it was hilarious, now right media is so bonkers it's terrifying.

>Take the BBC for example, they're as close as I can get to a neutral source but even they have a somewhat left wing bias. It's pretty mild though and they do have some somewhat right wing voices. As a moderate right winger I find it absolutely fine and easy to take into account. The Economist is great, and even the Guardian is worth reading from time to time. It's good to know what people with different opinions are thinking and why.

Actually I would say the BBC is everything but neutral. My partner reads the BBC while I consume more German news and the Guardian. It is often very obvious that the BBC often ignores news that reflect negatively on the UK government, even if they are very prominent in sources from mainland Europe and e.g. the Guardian.

BBC is not neutral in my opinion after reading their Brexit related articles

Funny. Every time I read a BBC article, I have the impression I'm getting a lobotomy.

The bias is so strong, more often than not you can make out from the title in which direction the article is going to be twisted.

> they're as close as I can get to a neutral source but even they have a somewhat left wing bias

The BBC is very, very far from being a neutral source, and your "somewhat" there is a very big understatement.

On the contrary, the BBC has a major right-wing bias and regularly downplays - and even often outright chooses to not report - pieces that reflect poorly on the UK Government (which becomes striking when you read some European or American dailies that report much more freely on such stories).

> However, fair warning: Le Monde diplomatique is heavily biased reporting.

I prefer that to the appearance of objectivity, which cannot be more than a facade and is more insidious. What is unacceptable is made up facts, but I am happy with opinionated analysis.

I've been subscribed to the paper version for a year now (French version), it's great, probably one of the best French newspaper to read.

Me, too. I brush up my French (https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/), and I love when the paper is delivered.

Kaj ĝi proponas esperantan version: https://eo.mondediplo.com/

Wow. I wonder what the readership numbers are on that.

I've always thought of Esperanto as the metric system of languages.

And whenever a thread comes up on HN with people railing against imperial measurement units, I wonder why they're not also speaking Esperanto.

How does that analogy work? Isn't metric used by over 90% (well.. [*]) of the world's population?

[*] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/2cjiau/self...

> I've always thought of Esperanto as the metric system of languages.

Nice troll. The metric system is actually used by everyone aside from the US as far as I know ;)

Nice troll

Not a troll at all. It's a language developed to be used as an international standard by people across all languages and cultures.

Please explain how the statement is a troll.

everyone aside from the US as far as I know

Then here is an opportunity to educate yourself. There are a bunch of countries that use imperial units both officially and informally.

I'd do the Googling for you, but I'm on mobile right now and not able to search properly.

If you want to nitpick, US is not using the imperial system, but the US Customary (and is indeed the only country doing that).

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

> It's a language developed to be used as an international standard by people across all languages and cultures.

Not really. It's not like it was developed by a universal consortium. It was created by a European guy and it draws primarily from Indo-European & Germanic languages. It's foreign to someone who isn't already well-acquainted with an Indo-European or Germanic language.

By contrast, most metric units as currently defined are relevant to most people across the globe. For instance, water boils at around 70-80c in Nepal, but most countries have some population that lives around sea level.

It's not that simple. Language difficulty isn't just about familiarity of vocabulary but also complexity of grammar. Some languages are just easier to learn regardless of shared vocabulary. Indonesian and Swahili, despite not having much shared vocabulary with Western languages, are well known to be among the easiest of natural languages to learn. I'm a native English speaker and have studied French, Spanish, German, Indonesian, Esperanto, and Mandarin and found Esperanto and Indonesian by far the easiest despite German (and maybe French due to the Norman Conquest) being both closer to English.

The foreignness is still an issue even if it's easier to learn than other Indo-European or Germanic languages. If the intention is to get everyone in the world on board, but only 2 of the major language families are represented, it could feel a lot like colonialism to those whose languages aren't represented.

> For instance, water boils at around 70-80c in Nepal

That's not completely false, but it quite misleading.

It's true that the boiling point on the top of Everest at just under 9000m is just under 70C. The boiling point only drops to 80C at 6000m, which is very high even for Nepal.

But the average elevation of Nepal is just over 3000m, where the boiling point is just under 90C. Kathmandu is at 1400m, with a boiling point around 95C. And the low point in Nepal is less than 100m above sea level, where the boiling point is pretty close to 100C.

So if it is easier to produce steam at high elevation does it mean power generation would be more efficient?

That kinda misses my point, but thanks for the extra details.

Canadian here. People over ~60 are more familiar with miles, ounces and gallons. Two generations ago was the last time they were mainstream. They tore down all the signs demarcated in miles in the 1970s. I know what they are, of course -- both the historical British Imperial units used here, and the American units. (They're different for volume! A Canadian or British gallon is about 4.1 litres, an American gallon about 3.8. So much for universal.)

I never use these units, other than in fixed expressions like "it goes on for miles". I think exclusively in metres for attempting to measure the length of anything, especially if I'm trying to be exact. Millimetres to metres to kilometres is all automatic. I don't actually know how big a yard is, other than knowing it's very slightly shorter than a metre. A foot is about 30 cm, that's how I know how big a foot is. I'd need to look at a conversion chart to tell you whether I need a t-shirt or a light jacket for 76 °F. I just know it's somewhere vaguely above freezing but not intolerably hot.

For my generation the units still in use are mostly limited to pounds (mostly for people's weight and produce), feet and inches (particularly for people's height), and cups, Farenheit and tablespoons in recipes. I've noticed even those are disappearing slowly. After a long period of dual labelling with $ per lb being larger on the sign, some stores now have $ per kg larger than the $ per lb. My mother was quite consternated when she first encountered packaging only in $ per kg a few years ago. Her generation was raised on the traditional units and switched in their teens and 20s and have been, understandably, confused by the metric units ever since. To her, a metre is thought of in terms like slightly longer than a yard. The metric units are alien and unnatural to her in the same way the traditional ones are to me.

In several provinces, they teach the American units to students as part of the curriculum. Again. After systematically excising every mention of traditional units 40 years ago. Being familiar with American units helps with trade and understanding American literature. That wasn't necessary for my generation (I could just ask my parents or an older coworker what a quart was!) but it might be now.

> Not a troll at all. It's a language developed to be used as an international standard by people across all languages and cultures.

Well then it is nothing like the metric system, which was developed by French scientists to get rid of the multitude of units bearing the same name with different definitions depending on location, and with stupid multiples. Which was then further rationalised and made into an international standard. So yeah, the analogy was either woefully uninformed, or a troll.

It is a troll because the friction from learning and communicating in a new language is in no way comparable to switching units of measurements. Units of measurements can easily be converted from one to the other, you can slowly transition over decades, etc. Also switching to metric is solving a bunch of conversion problems, while Esperanto is somewhat solving a problem but not really.

I have been and lived on several continents. In my experience the metrics system is a widely used de facto and de jure standard taught in schools around the world.

Despite all of Esperanto's qualities, I am yet to bump into a fluent speaker in the flesh.

Stating they are similar seems like a troll to me.

I'm not going to wade into the Esperanto debate, but I find it fascinating that so many countries use the Metric system except when they don't.

In Germany for instance almost everything is metric except (ironically?) for computers and televisions, you still measure your screen in Zoll (inches). And you see Pfund (pound) in markets but they normalized that to 500g long ago, so it's kinda-sorta in the system.

I'm in Thailand right now and most things are in metric besides, again, computers and TVs -- 13" laptop, 27" monitor, 52" TV, etc -- but then, maddeningly for me, picture frames are usually measured in inches. So while you have DIN A4 and DIN A3 frames, because office paper uses DIN sizes AFAICT, it's really hard to find a 24x30cm or 30x40cm frame.

And then there is the United Kingdom...

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

> In Germany for instance almost everything is metric except (ironically?) for computers and televisions, you still measure your screen in Zoll (inches).

That’s the same thing in France, but I think it’s just a byproduct of so much of computer stuff coming from the US. Computer monitors tend to be informally measured in inches (though you have to provide the figure in cm as well), and television sets in cm.

By the way, inches have been defined in terms of cm for quite a while now, so they are just a really annoying non-integer multiple of the cm.

> And you see Pfund (pound) in markets but they normalized that to 500g long ago, so it's kinda-sorta in the system.

That’s right, a (metric) pound is half a kilogram. That was defined in a decree by Napoleon in 1812 as a way for people to keep using old units names without giving up on the advantages of the metric system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesures_usuelles

> picture frames are usually measured in inches.

That’s just evil.

> And then there is the United Kingdom...

Yeah, can’t have that new fangled French thing. So now we buy milk in 2.272 l bottles. On the contrary, on the continent they are happy to sell you a pint of beer, but don’t expect an imperial pint.

>On the contrary, on the continent they are happy to sell you a pint of beer, but don’t expect an imperial pint.

Pints and beer measures are just hilarious. Australia is crazy they have pints, schooners, pots and ponies (and some others as well I think). The total craziness is that their size (and even order IIRC) is different in different states.

Edit: link for clarification https://manofmany.com/lifestyle/drinks/beer-glass-sizes-in-a...

One thing I noticed long ago when looking at opium paraphernalia in NY flea markets was how much flair people invest into their drug consumption. Alcohol is no different and damn I love a manhattan in a nice crystal low ball or an imperial pint of ale ...

> That’s the same thing in France

I just checked and two of the three main stores (darty, boulanger) give the size in cm, with a convertion to inches.

The third one (fnac) uses primarily inches.

I like the idea of a 'metric pound' at 500g. Definitely smart, similar to a 'metric ton'.

Some people in the US work with a 'metric ounce' which is exactly 28 grams.

No need to ignore Liberia like that.

Actually the USA use the Metric System officially, not in common life: https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si

I think it's because metric is logical, makes things easier to understand and is used practically everywhere except the US.

English has been adopted as the international language (largely thanks to American TV, Movie and Music exports) so Esperanto doesn't really deliver much and doesn't have the numbers to be worth it.

To be fair, the UK is also a cultural giant with respect to radio(!), TV, film, and music. But yes, your point about culture exports is the key to understanding why English is so frequently someone's second language.

> English has been adopted as the international language (largely thanks to American TV, Movie and Music exports)

The British Empire might have had something to do with it too...

I doubt it: it lost its importance before English was established as the world language. E.g., German was still the international scientific language in the early 1900s. And let's not kid ourselves and believe that European countries would have adopted English because it's spoken in, say, India. If sheer numbers were the defining factor, we'd all have adopted some standard Chinese a long time ago.

Esperanto is the most well known International Auxiliary Language, often known by many who do not knows that others IAL exists, but the real reason behind it is not accepted by any élite and being not understood by the masses never took off.

The main point is: to be peaceful and diverse we need a common easy language to communicate, one that put everyone on par, so an artificial language. Unfortunately to craft a society all élite need a common language of course limited to their "society", so the current world superpower de-facto impose it's language. In the past was French, not English, tomorrow who knows.

Until people realize that to really progress we need to be diverse and communicative and so we need a common language just for international relations no one will push toward that and nothing really change.

To figure out how much a language means just try the ability to read the press from many different countries and how doing so form a less directed vision of the world making easy to spot propaganda from reality.

Obligatory link to JBR's Ranto. Quite fittingly, it starts out with a Bad Language warning: http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/index.html

Came here to say about mondediplo, delighted to find another esperantist who reads it. Thanks.

thank you didn't know that one

Important to note that LMD is owned by Le Monde, but has full editorial autonomy.

Only 51%: “Le Monde owns 51%; the Friends of Le Monde diplomatique and Gunter Holzmann Association, comprising the paper’s staff, together own 49%.”

https://mondediplo.com/about

I've been a regular Monde diplo reader for years, even if I'm a consubtantial right-winger (and it's well known for being very left-wing), for the only reason that it's the best written paper in France.

This is genuinely suprising to me. How can you find le diplo the best written paper in France and consider yourself right-winger? I thought anyone right of Mélenchon would not bear reading more than 2 lines of it.

Similar to how I, a committed communist, think The Economist is the best paper written in English. When a paper has a very explicit point of view that they don't hide, it's very easy to "read between the lines" and evaluate what they're saying on their own merits, taking their bias into consideration. The news is still the news, and you can make sense of what they're saying about it if you know their inherent biases. This is why I prefer sources like The Economist, who are happy to tell you they're classically liberal, rather than somewhere like CNN that's "unbiased news" that's really very biased without consciously revealing this bias.

>The news is still the news

Since it's impossible to cover everything that happens in the universe, choosing which news is important is a big part of being partial.

Anyway, I am less surprised that a revolutionary comrade like you is interested in knowing how the establishment thinks (to fight it I guess) than by OP's attitude, i.e., a reactionary taking interest (and judging positively) what the revolutionaries are writing. In my experience, people self-labelling as right-leaning tend to dismiss anything coming from the left as "utopian bullshit".

Labeling 'Le Monde," the most trusted newspaper in France and one of the largest papers on the planet as one written by "revolutionaries" is rich. There's far more difference between my politics and Le Monde than Le Monde and The Economist, both of which are still fundamentally liberal, reformist papers that accept the rule of capital and that capitalism is the Only System, just disagree on slight reforms around the edges. OP isn't that strange since Le Monde and him probably agree on most larger political decisions and just disagree about the reforms around the edges unless they're like a monarchist or something.

bayart (and most people ITT) are talking about le monde diplomatique, not le monde

You can admire and appreciate something someone without agreeing. I often read the Times (of London) and Charlie Hebdo even though I disagree quite profoundly on some issue with both editorial lines. That’s fine.

We need to be in contact with other opinions. As long as these opinions are based on our actual reality, not an alternate imaginary universe.

Oh I agree. I read tinfoil hat conspiracies, right wing media, religious stuff, ... but I wouldn't call any of these the 'best written paper'. I should have made it clearer that the rating as 'best' was the surprising part.

Personally my limit is alternative facts. I have very little patience for conspiracy theories.

It is definitely hard to remain calm in front of alternative facts. However, I believe it is a very serious issue and I would like to somehow do something against it, someday. I don't know how though; but in the meantime, I keep up to date with the latest alternative narratives Big Algorithm is willing to feed me.

I was thinking the other day, now I understand better how effective Goebbels could have been and how propaganda shaped European politics about 100 years ago (I was listening to whatshisface the Russian ambassador to the UN, but got the same feeling listening to Sergei Lavrov). In that sense, some exposure to this sort of things is helpful. But the tricks are very obvious once you have some training spotting them.

I'm not so intellectually fragile that I need everything I read to fit my worldview. Note that I'm referring chiefly to its literary qualities (which in my mind trumps editorial lines). There are publications out there that line up better with my ideological bend, but they're "written with the feet" as we say.

Because, even it is a subsidiary of Le Monde (Le Monde owns 51%, the rest is owned by the Associations "Les Amis Du Monde Diplomatique" and "Gunter Holzmann" which are all the personnel), it has full editorial autonomy and it shows by the quality of their articles.

It also shows in their political line, which I like.

Thank you. Subscribed. This article [1], in particular, is a gem out of the current edition.

(Aesthetic note: that's the actual URL. No trackers. No strings of nonsense. Sweetly concise. Says more than I realized about a team's culture.)

[1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear

Also regarding aesthetics, Le Monde diplomatique has nearly perfect typography.

Isn't that a fairly common news URL structure?

* https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/4/7/bank-of-japan-mem...

* https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/sports/baseball/julio-rod...

Likely less due to the team's "culture" but instead normal things like SEO, UX, etc. There are no tracker parameters in the URL, but there is a tracker on the page itself. They say outright this change is in part to make money, there's nothing wrong with that.

Despite the similar name, LMD is not similar at all to Le monde. (The latter owns part of the former, but that is the only connection between them).

Le monde is a general (centrist) daily newspaper. LMD is a staunchly left-wing monthly.

Le Monde Diplomatique is an amazing journal but I don’t think they are the same company at all.

I went on and it didnt ask me to accept cookies and has no ads. Already love it

This is because Le Monde is not GDPR compliant.

Is there a list of prominent English language newspapers from each country?

Like:

UK: Times/Guardian

US: NYT/WP

Australia: The Australian

Singapore: Straits Times

HongKong : SCMP

Pakistan: Dawn

India: Hindu

Nigeria: Guardian Nigeria

For the Arab world: Al Jazeera.

For Canada: CBC/Radio-Canada (the french speaking side)

Although more news oriented, my favorite sources for quality information in the US are the associated press (AP News) and Reuters.

>For Canada: CBC/Radio-Canada (the french speaking side)

I don't know about the french side, but english side of the CBC has been publishing an awful lot of political activism. Then again Quebec has CAQ and Bloc as representatives?

It has gotten to the point that Conservative party pretty much runs on defunding them. Detrimentally and they are aware of it, they don't care, it's the right thing to do. An election in 2025 will be a Conservative win. CBC is on the brink of going away.

> I don't know about the french side, but english side of the CBC has been publishing an awful lot of political activism.

I wasn't aware of that. Do you have any example? From my understanding CBC and Radio-Canada are still by far the best and most neutral medias in Canada.

> Then again Quebec has CAQ and Bloc as representatives?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Can you elaborate a bit more?

> It has gotten to the point that Conservative party pretty much runs on defunding them. Detrimentally and they are aware of it, they don't care, it's the right thing to do. An election in 2025 will be a Conservative win. CBC is on the brink of going away.

This started under Harper and IMO is one of the worst things he's done to the country (although he made a lot of other terrible decisions). I really hope that, if 2025 is a conservative win, CBC will be left untouched.

>I wasn't aware of that. Do you have any example? From my understanding CBC and Radio-Canada are still by far the best and most neutral medias in Canada.

An excellent write up by Tara https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/speaking-freely?s=r

There's really too many examples. CBC publicly admitted they wont hire caucasians anymore. They have an official, ombudsman confirmed, position that racism against white people is not possible.

Microaggressions, etc etc. Hell even an article says you must get consent to hug your own 2 year old.

There was an article in Urdu, no english translation available. When you translate it, it basically said canadians are stealing pakistani babies. The government then when this comes out bans adoptions from muslim countries.

How about the endless examples of fake news. They themselves were selling 'white power' tshirts and wrote articles about how white supremacy in Canada is out of control. Then other media realized the guy who was selling the shirts works for the CBC. Then suddenly it was just a social experiment.

Then again... they were calling for the denazification of the freedom protest. CBC full frame dslr photographers just happened to know where a nazi flag was in ottawa and followed them through the day. Generally speaking they labelled a ton of punjabi truckers as white supremacists. Who thought it was hilarious.

>This started under Harper and IMO is one of the worst things he's done to the country (although he made a lot of other terrible decisions). I really hope that, if 2025 is a conservative win, CBC will be left untouched.

Scheer and Otoole ran on defunding the CBC. Pierre Poillivre looks like he has leadership in the bag and is quite public about defunding the CBC.

Let's also discuss the elephant in the room. Trudeau will have been in power for 10 years in 2025. 3 more years of corruption and scandal coming, assuming the NDP continue to support him. He already lost last election. He currently has the weakest government in history. His confidence push on emergency act forced Jagmeet's hands. Jagmeet compares himself to Jack Layton and Tommy Douglas but that is so beyond offensive. This coalition they have is also quite unpopular, but it's the only way either of them stay in power.

Though in their coalition agreement they were quite clear about significant changes to how our elections work, including making election day 3 days long.

The CBC will be getting defunded so long as the election isn't rigged.

Then again smearing the protest as a bunch of racists and then crushing the peaceful protest and further removing our rights? Never actually addressing the reason for the protest, just continued restrictions on our rights?

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-help-offset-fo...

There's a known factor: https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-russia-bread-food-pr...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/08/22/the-arab-spring...

If Trudeau is predicting correctly that we are going to have food shortages. He better address this unjustified use of the emergency act and give us a roadmap of returning our rights.

Otherwise, when the weather is nice and people are getting a bit hungry... they'll be heading to Ottawa.

A fairly significant part of the Arab world would likely have a problem with Al Jazeera (funded by the Qatar state) being named as their sole newspaper of record.

What would the Arab world recommend instead?

I guess my point was that "the Arab world" is diverse enough politically (and geographically) to not be able to be covered by a single newspaper. AJ gives you Qatar's perspective, but Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt have had strong differences with Qatar recently so coverage of some issues will be very different between AJ and those countries' news media. And even aside from bias, AJ is naturally going to be stronger on Gulf issues than it is on North Africa.

You're completely right. That was reductive of me. I'd probably edit my comment, but I don't think I can now. Thanks for the feedback.

Which is an alternative international newspaper of record for the Arab world?

That's completely fair. I don't live there so am not aware of the best newspapers, but Al Jazeera is internationally renowned for the quality of its journalism.

Al Jazeera Arabic is known to be much more biased/Qatar aligned than Al Jazeera English.

The same seems to be true for SCMP - I read SCMP in Beijing and was shocked by how different it was.

“The Australian” is a national aggregation of the local city based Murdock owned papers.

It should not be listed without its competitors the Fairfax owned papers the “Sydney Morning Herald” and “The Age” also being listed.

Both the Murdock and Fairfax owned papers are equally prominent in the Australian media landscape and are essentially a duopoly in Australia’s biggest cities.

The Aus media ownership landscape is such a car crash. Rupert Murdoch is a cancer.

I think Politico.eu is also pretty good for EU coverage. Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium with additional offices in London, Berlin, Paris.

To qualify, politico.eu is pretty good for news about the EU, as in the EU institutions and EU politics

I'm not sure I'd suggest it for general purpose news about EU member states. It has some stuff but it's not really their focus

Spain: https://english.elpais.com/

newest article in Spain section there is from more than one month ago, I would not call that news source on Spain, even day old would be pretty lazy for English edition, but this seems to be pretty dead for someone interested in Spain

not exactly sure whether "prominent", but The Local (.com and their local variants) covers big part of Europe

Slovakia: Slovak Spectator (independent) https://spectator.sme.sk

NewsNow - official Slovak news agency TASR, less prominent but should cover all events in English for free https://newsnow.tasr.sk

Czechia: Czech radio (gov owned/propaganda) https://english.radio.cz

Czech Daily seems better for Czechia, though less prominent https://czechdaily.cz

Hungary: Hungary Today https://hungarytoday.hu

It would make more sense to read local news sites (CZ - idnes.cz novinky.cz cnn.iprima.cz SK - pravda.sk tvnoviny.sk teraz.sk) via Google Translate.

> Czechia: Czech radio (gov owned/propaganda) https://english.radio.cz

State-owned implies governmental editorial control and is common in countries with less media freedoms (RT for example).

Czech radio (as is the case in most countries in Europe) is a public broadcaster and the government shouldn't have editorial control.

it doesn't, but their agenda it's very clear, very anti previous gov in favor of current gov ignoring many things running own agenda in line with current gov

France: Le Monde Diplomatique[0]

[0]:https://mondediplo.com/

americas quarterly is a good publication for latin america https://www.americasquarterly.org/

Bangladesh: Dhaka Tribune (https://www.dhakatribune.com)

I find a lot of the English language media in countries that isn't majority English language speaking tends to be slanted in a snobbishly upper middle class or otherwise elitist direction. It's also difficult to find trustworthy publications in countries with less free media environments than US/Canada/Australia/etc. (SCMP for example does little to "speak truth to power" these days.) One of my tricks is to look at big corruption exposés like Panama Papers and then see which regional media reported on those topics[0].

Wikipedia in general is a decent source for clicking through lists of media in different countries[1], although bear in mind that some countries have better online news sites that aren't technically newspapers but do publish a lot of written content.

I am not aware of a full list of English language only papers, although it would be useful to have one. Usually when I am interested in a regional story I do the Wikipedia dance to find a couple of local outlets that are reporting on it. For getting alerted to the story in the first place it's good to subscribe to some global-oriented newsletters like the one from The Guardian's Global Development section, or Proximities[2] on Substack.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers#Participating_m...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_newspapers

[2] https://proximities.substack.com/

Germany's DW

that's state funded (EU) propaganda on par with RT

you are better off with The Local or even Spiegel than DW

https://www.thelocal.de https://www.spiegel.de/international/

For UK - Economist

Not a newspaper

It’s a series of articles that are delivered to your house once a week. That’s close enough.

They call themselves a newspaper, though they strain the definition, I think.

For historical reasons the Economist is still commonly called a newspaper. https://www.economist.com/frequently-asked-questions

Huh, TIL!

For US Id say it's NYT/WSJ. The post has middling circulation (~1/4 of WSJ and ~1/2 of NYT) and is not as well regarded as it used to be, esp. after the sale to Bezos. Meanwhile, USA Today has the highest distribution, but not is not nearly as respected as NYT/WSJ.

New Zealand is a little complicated, but stuff.co.nz is probably the largest web outlet (which is associated with some of the most well known newspapers e.g., The Dominion Post).

Israel: Haaretz. Left-liberal, considered the newspaper of record.

I am glad to see this. It is good to have a diverse set of news sources. Some others that I have consistently used to broaden my perspectives are https://restofworld.org/ and https://www.aljazeera.com/

I am curious which topics are

> "too French"

for translation into the English language edition.

Yes and these ironically sounds like the most interesting pieces to complement international media.

I was surprised at France's "international" (read: English) coverage of the Ukraine war from their state broadcasting France24.

https://www.youtube.com/c/FRANCE24English

They've been live and free since at least the start of the conflict: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3MuIUNCCzI

It's interesting to see France cater to anglophones when in Quebec we do the opposite and try to convert as many people to French as possible in order to "protect the French language". You'll never see a French Quebec broadcaster spin up an anglophone version..

>You'll never see a French Quebec broadcaster spin up an anglophone version..

The dynamics here in Quebec are obviously much different. France is a francophone country, while Quebec is a francophone province within a largely anglophone country.

The state media here has long had bilingual offerings. That aside, the French media here in Quebec doesn't really make money. They are kept afloat by government subsidies (this is true of a lot of the English media as well - most get handouts). So spinning off some sort of English version, for multiple reasons, is a non-starter. Besides, if you're an anglophone in places like Montreal or Gatineau, you've got English media anyway.

> They are kept afloat by government subsidies

Most media (that's not already state owned) in France is the same

France24 is kind of alone on its purpose though, it's only meant for international audience and it's not read much domestically

Not entirely true, France Info is basically France24-but-for-France. Most of the coverage is the exact same.

The France24 text site is a regular read for me:

https://france24.com

Videos are embedded, but they wait for you to press PLAY! Civilization does persist, even on the Internet.

I was gonna say the same. My french isnt great so France24 was surprisingly (?) good at the coverage of the war. They host great analysis too which helps to put everything in context instead of the usual sensationalist coverage.

France 24 is great, available in French, English and Arab

...and Spanish.

Please, don't waste your time reading Le Monde. Check the owners and the people on the board (one of them started as a pornographer), and you will get the spirit of this propaganda state sponsored machine.

Whats wrong with "starting as a pornographer?" Or even [currently, if applicable] being one?

Except that Le Monde is not really quality journalism.

It is owned by the wealthiest French people, gets government subsidies, and has advertising on it.

All of these are fighting against the independence and objectivity of the content.

Mediapart, who doesn't have these problems, also has content in English, if you're desperate for a French point of view.

Le Monde will only serve you more liberal, globalist propaganda.

https://www.mediapart.fr/en/english

> Except tha le Monde is not really quality journalism.

Agreed, but the other source you mention (Mediapart) is not what I would call quality journalism either, their political bias is intense.

I'm likely naive, but in my book, quality journalism is supposed to report facts, as much as they can be established without tainting them with a selection bias and must steer clear of injecting one's opinion in the content produced unless it comes with a truly clear warning ("this is an opinion piece").

Mediapart is profoundly not that.

They definitely have a bias for the left. But they are, objective enough to be the first to report on, for example, embarrassing campaign funding issues from Mélenchon's last campaign, a few weeks before the election taking place these days.

Actually, every newspaper has some bias regarding the information they publish, and it's unavoidable. The most honest ones acknowledge that, contrarily to "Le Monde" and all the others main french newspapers ("Le Figaro", "Libération") claim.

Regarding Mediapart, it is indeed strongly opinionated newspaper, but you know that beforehand.

They have significant issues, but I'll never say it's not quality journalism (part of it actually). I've been a subscriber for years because of the quality of their investigations. For the record, none of these are pursued by big newspapers in France anymore: "Le Monde" and all major newspaper just relay the general information/propaganda, with no strong analysis. When they talk about scandals, they are never at their origin, and mostly relay the work done by others.

And when you know that most of them are owned by billionaires who have their own agenda, and that a significant chunk of their money (several millions per year) comes from the French state, you understand why.

You cannot be independent if your owners are billionaires, and if your income don't exclusively come from people who are paying for you to be independent (ie. subscribers). Everyone that argue against that is a liar. And you have in France 2 newspapers matching this criteria : Mediapart, and of course "Le Canard Enchainé".

The main issue I had with Mediapart (which led to cancel my subscription) was indeed the fact that on some subjects (mostly the "woke' things), they twist the facts to match their agenda. Some would say it's another view on the same facts but my opinion was that sometimes, they tried to make allegations on something not strong enough. Regarding the other subjects, I had nothing but praise for them.

> The main issue I had with Mediapart (which led to cancel my subscription) was indeed the fact that on some subjects (mostly the "woke' things), they twist the facts to match their agenda.

> Regarding the other subjects, I had nothing but praise for them.

It’s weird how you noticed they are twisting facts to match their agenda on a specific topic, and somehow still think they’re not doing the same elsewhere.

Mediapart is a very unreliable source.

> Mediapart is a very unreliable source.

As opposed to what?

This is an oversimplification of things, but I'll gladly explain.

First, behind the term "newspaper", you have journalists. Not all of them are equal. Some are professionals, some have connections, and some are not good enough. Like every human. Yo also hae some journalist that specialize in some areas, when you better have solid arguments to avoid a lawsuit when publishing (and usually, only part of it is published to be able to react). I know the ones that I consider to be good. To drop a few names, Kevin Arfi, Laurent Mauduit, Martine Orange, etc. I mean, their career and their work speak for themselves, their papers are detailed, well structured, they provide facts and proofs, etc.

Then, sometimes, facts speak for themselves. You have so many evidences on a scandal that there is no point arguing. You may object that some other facts are deliberately hidden, but more often than not, the accused people never answer on the substance, always on the form. It speaks volume. I mean, Mediapart is not a young newspaper anymore, and they have their track record.

Also, in any case, you're free to form your own opinion based on the facts provided. I have sometimes - as I said on the "woke things" a different interpretation of the facts that the journalist. But to be able to do that, you still need the facts, and they are provided. I "just" read the things differently.

I take everything I read with a grain of salt, whether I like or not the newspaper, whether I pay for it or not.

But let's go. Tell me some cases when Mediapart was wrong ? It should not be difficult for an "unreliable" source. Oh and tell me also what are your reliable sources, especially on the subject of investigations. I'm curious. Because apart from the "Canard enchainé", I don't find any.

Because it will always be easier to discredit a newspaper like Mediapart, than to provide alternatives and fact. And if you want me to give some examples when scandals published in Mediapart proved to be true, I have many.

I like the idea of situated knowledge. No one speak out of nowhere without any bias.

No one can cover all facts, and so any report will inevitably reflect biases in picking. For example, most human media out there are heavily anthropocentric. That doesn’t mean it is intrinsically bad, but this will definitely lead to covering events of the universe as if human actions was some kind of epitome phenomenon, despite the fact we have been capable of standing back as far as having pale blue dot.

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

Sure but Le Monde, with all the veneer of real journalism (tm) that it supposedly has , is arguably even less neutral than the less respected mediapart.

French society is extremely "dérigée" by the traditional vielle elite, much more so than the US for example. And it's not because they are conspiring to keep control or anything! It's mostly just due to how french society is structured. Power is very centralized and so are cultural institutions, in both cases around Paris. The education system is even more elitist, with the Grandes Écoles acting as a very selective gatekeeper. To the point where a career at Le Monde is probably a lot harder if impossible to sustain without having attended those schools.

What does that all mean? Well you get a very incestuous relationship between state, industry and media and a media that is extremely "parisian". They all went went to the same school, know the same people, share networks, etc.

Once they get in that very bourgeois clique, they become less trustworthy than even an opiniated source like Mediapart imo.

[Especially since direct state interference in the media/culture (or in general) is much less of a taboo in France than in the anglosphere. ]

Possibly the most respected periodical that I hear discussed on HN is "The Economist". Which is not classically-liberal and globalist due to conspiracy theories involving malevolent overloards. That's just legitimately what it is.

Your definitions of "quality" vs. "propaganda" are wildly ideological. Whatever one's personal subjective beliefs and perspectives may be, they should at least be self-aware about them. "Anything that doesn't confirm my biases is biased!" is not a healthy way to frame your world.

I'm curious why you consider a periodical that you admit is heavily biased and has a certain agenda, the "most respected".

I read the Economist occasionally with exactly the caveat that you mention, it is an extremely biased periodical that only presents a certain world view. To be frank I feel this takes away from the quality and definitely verges on propaganda so the two are related.

It has a worldview, and is fairly open about it. Most everyone reading it is aware of that worldview, and seek it out either because it matches their own or because it counterbalances their own. Within its worldview, the articles are generally well-researched and well-written and increase the knowledge of readers.

Everything has a bias. Period. It's not a matter of things being "respectable" for confirming your own bias, it's a matter of not lazily labeling as "propaganda" things that don't.

I think of the Guardian in those terms, too - “advocacy journalism”. Things were a bit different under Rusbridger but now it’s got a strong, almost singular focus on a climate change agenda. Which, frankly, I think is fantastic. We need a paper like that.

I also tend to think it’s much more productive to categorise news sources as either “bona fide” - an earnest attempt to thoroughly research and report what you observe, as you observe it - versus “mala fides” - everything else.

As you say, there’s no such thing as unbiased reporting. Every paper has a world view - I’ll quite happily nail my colours to the humanist mast of a paper like the Guardian.

I'll leave this H.L. Mencken quote here that aptly describes the Economist. The nature of periodicals and newspapers especially militant, crusading ones is timeless.

“One of the principal marks of an educated man is the fact that he does not take his opinions from newspapers -- not, at any rate, from the militant, crusading newspapers. On the contrary, his attitude toward them is almost always one of frank cynicism, with indifference as its mildest form and contempt as its commonest. He knows that they are constantly falling into false reasoning about the things within his personal knowledge, within the narrow circle of his special education, and so he assumes that they make the same, or even worse, errors about other things,whether intellectual or moral. This assumption, it may be said, is quite justified by the facts.”

Mencken did his fair share of crusading, and commenting brashly about things he didn't know much about.

As I am an educated man, I'll take H.L. Mencken's advice and not take my opinion from his crusading in the Baltimore Sun. So I'll cede my entire political worldview to the Economist.

Nice to scratch one big thing off my to do list

But you would still need to get your news from somewhere? Seems like this quote is an even bigger impetus to read many news sources so you don’t fall into a default position held by a newspaper

One thing I find with the Economist is I can generally read an article on a current event and come away with a factual account of the event and separate their view from it. From their own account I can argue and question their interpretations and extrapolations.

> definitely verges on propaganda

It was specifically founded 180 years ago to propagate free trade. Its mission hasn’t changed, and is no secret.

Its mission for the past 2 decades was seemingly to also agitate for every war it could. And honestly the articles are just shallow in general

Just these headlines themselves are a bit disgusting honestly:

https://twitter.com/NaneAam/status/1504168188212387841

> also agitate for every war it could

It isn't agitating for a wider Russian-Ukrainian war right now (hell, it's explaining why it would be a poor idea for NATO to get directly involved in the war). It didn't agitate for a military response to the Russian annexation of Crimea. It didn't agitate for war against Iran, not even when Trump was considering it after the Iranian missile attack on a US base in Iraq. It's been a while, but I think it's criticized all of Israel's recent wars, as well as the proxy war going on in Yemen.

It's also criticized the Iraq War, and they are very open about the fact that a) they originally supported the Iraq War, and b) that support was a mistake. You don't find too many people who will admit to both--for most people, if they now believe the Iraq War to have been a mistake, they try very hard to bury the fact that they ever thought otherwise.

I am fine with your criticism I am biased, and unapologetic about it.

Huh? The Economist is THE neoliberal globalist journal. What a bizarre characterization.

Did you mean ZeroHedge or something?

I think you may have mis-parsed the parent comment. They're saying exactly what you are saying.

“Classically-liberal” is a much fairer description of the Economist than “neoliberal”.

You can't be a neoliberal if you were publishing from the same viewpoint in 1843, they're classically liberal and helped define what that even means.

> You can't be a neoliberal if you were publishing from the same viewpoint in 1843, they're classically liberal and helped define what that even means.

That seems like a distinction without a difference. Isn't neoliberalism just liberalism, but willfully ignoring all or most of the problems that led to it going out of fashion the first time?

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

> Neoliberalism, or neo-liberalism,[1] is a term used to describe the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism.

Also:

> In 1938 at the Colloque Walter Lippmann, the term neoliberalism was proposed ... ultimately chosen to be used to describe a certain set of economic beliefs.... According to attendees Louis Rougier and Friedrich Hayek, the competition of neoliberalism would establish an elite structure of successful individuals that would assume power in society, with these elites replacing the existing representative democracy acting on the behalf of the majority.

Oof.

My point is that they aren't revivalists, but an organization that has always had a classically liberal perspective. They also aren't Hayekians, anti New Deal, or particularly animated by a need to shrink states to their bare minimum. You also aren't going to find the Economist fiercely beating the drum of privatizing the public sphere which is a key focus of neo-liberalism. You'll also find them criticizing things like shock therapy.

The Economist is pretty decent altogether.

I've checked Mediapart and every single piece on that page is about France, even Russia-Ukraine coverage is all about what Macron said. Just saying :)

yeah do a way with liberalism let us go to populism history teaches us that this is a much better system

And these are the only two choices, right?

communism, stalinism, totalitarianism, feudalism and some others. afc depending on where you live (eg USA) people from EU are living in a communist society ;)

Not saying that things can't be improved but most politicians that are railing against liberalism are very much populists

> Except that Le Monde is not really quality journalism.

Yeah. They are living off their prestigious name, but nowadays I find that a good chunk of their articles are essentially opinion pieces.

On the other hand they now publish some high quality and well researched youtube videos.

This seems to be a problem with some of our press institutions in the US too. The NYT is inundated with horrible opinion pieces. They still do some decent reporting but you have to sift through a lot of garbage to get to it. It's still better than, and not at all comparable to, the news from an alternate dimension on Fox or the (somehow) crazier smaller nationalist networks, but extremely disheartening.

Propaganda is a strange word to use when the alternative you’re implying is literally batshit insane blood libel level conservative drivel.

These days hearing something called liberal globalist sounds like an endorsement to me. Not that I consider myself a liberal globalist but I usually find my opinions to be opposite of those who use that term.

I find it pretty hard here in France to find a media with a pro-market, small-governement stance. Basically the whole press is statist. L'Opinion and Les Echos are somewhat the least worst.

These adjectives are wrong, mediapart has done really useful investigations and have a good reputation. I’m not reading their work everyday, I prefer LeMonde which has a lot more interesting articles to me.

> Le Monde will only serve you more liberal, globalist propaganda.

> All of these are fighting against the independence and objectivity of the content.

Totally. It's, hidden behind nice typography (for the print version at least) and hardly ever a spelling mistake, the french version of "Pravda".

As opposed to Rupert Murdoch, Jef Bezos (washington post), and other billionaires. who own and control a lot of English news properties and use this to spoon feed you right wing and left wing populist drivel?

I tend to sample across different media to get an impression of what is going on. Lately, I've been using Al Jazeera, the Times of Israel, BBC News and a few others. They each have their biases. But, if you have Al Jazeera and the Times of Israel agreeing with each other, you are dealing with solid information probably. Often the subtleties in wording, emphasis, etc. is also very telling. Adding le Monde to that list will help me understand how the French look at this world. Der Spiegel International sadly pulled the plug a few years ago but used to be similarly helpful with understanding the German perspective.

If you only read stuff that confirms your own biases, you are probably not getting informed very well.

Le Monde Diplomatique though is high quality.

> globalist propaganda

Using the term "globalist" undermines your arguments, the history of its usage is deeply tied to various conspiracy theories. It's polarizing, so the people you're pointing your comment to won't consider it serious because of it.

Imagine if I started quoting Mao - the rest of the comment fades.

Very cool. It is always nice to read foreign newspapers to get a slightly different take or opinion on topics. I am quite happy that it is only 2,49€/month for a digital subscription.

I considered subscribing to a German newspaper or two, but their digital prices are quite high, often coming in at 10+€/month. NYTimes is only $4/month, but I imagine their subscriber count is higher.

https://www.france24.com/en/live

which is the mouth of the French government. You'd probably want to pass on that if you want any objective news.

Not really, France24 is the more the voice of the French language community, it does not have the same vision as the French government. It has its own bias of course but different ones.

State media != state propaganda. It's financed by the State but there's no editorial oversight, just a coloration that's inerantly due to the culture it exists in. It's far more similar to DW or Al Jazeera than it is to RT.

This is a curious move. I don't know if the board expect Americans to be really that interested into the depth of local french politics (I supposed late night comedians would have a ball commenting on Jean Lassale's speeches, but would it really get an audience ?) ; or if they think they can provide a different take on world events - but I honestly don't see any difference between their editorial line and that of The Guardian, The Economist or the NYT. (And I don't have any particular problem with those lines, they're legitimate and debatable and not exactly subtle or contrary to the reader's interests.)

I wonder if they'll translate the "Décodeurs" section, which kinda brought the "fact checking" thing to France, for better or for worse. The original editor in chief for this section burnt out after one too many twitter mob shitstorm, and wrote a very nice "report from the trenches" book about social networks madness [1]

[1] https://livre.fnac.com/a15174266/Samuel-Laurent-J-ai-vu-nait...

English is the lingua franca, just because something is published in english does not mean it's necessarily targeted towards only Americans.

Why the assumption that it's for an American audience? It's probably more for a boarder European market, rather than Americans. The great thing about the French, British, Germans, Italians, Spanish, Polish, etc, is that most of them understand English. This way they don't have to translate it into several languages, when just one will suffice.

As I stated elsewhere, I agree that the assumption of American audience was misplaced. My bad.

That being said, I'm going to counter on the idea that _most_ Germans, Italians ... understand English.

It's certainly true that the _subset_ of Europeans targeted by Le Monde (affluent, educated, europhile, pro-business-yet-socialy-left-of-center) does.

So the move is less strange if you assume they're trying to compete with "The Guardian" or "The Economist".

I still wonder if they hope to compete with the New York Times or Washington Post.

Also, it's a bit disheartening that they decided to react to accusations like "you're too Parisians, you're out of touch with the real country, you're globalist who don't understand the troubles of real people" with such a "hold my overpriced wine, I'm going starting a world domination plan" move.

We already have a media concentration problem in France ; if all national papers start catering to the exact same globish audience, it will just make sense to stop having them altogether and just assume everyone will read the NYT, maybe with an adapted sport section (maybe not.)

Not good for local news.

Not sure why you're assuming Americans are the market.

It just seems in keeping with other European press organizations like Deutsche Welle, BBC, (or, ugh, RT) etc. that offer an internationally focused version of their brand which also happens to be in English... because most of the world speaks that.

(I very much enjoy Deutsche Welle's content, myself. But could be because I'm a bit of a Deutsch-o-phile on account of my father being a German immigrant to Canada)

Fair enough, US is obviously not the _only_ international target (I guess I was primed by reading about their team in LA.)

The french version of those are France24 and RFI, they're already available in english. I think Le Monde in english is more comparable to Spiegel International.

Not sure I'd put Le Monde's quite biased left-moralist editorial choices in the same league as The Economist...

America, the protagonist.

I'm not American, and I'm part of their target :)

I wonder why they didn't have it previously. What large French news sources/agencies have an English version?

https://www.afp.com/en/news-hub https://www.france24.com/en/

And otherwise, there is this agregator: https://petrolette.space/#tab-11 (the fragment identifier doesn’t work properly it seems, but you can easily find the "fr" tab on the board)

There are no news available at AFP website, not sure why you link it.

The question was "What large French news sources/agencies have an English version?"

AFP stands for "Agence France Presse". The relation seems rather straight forward.

Moreover, a few click away from the given link, you can find things like :https://factcheck.afp.com/ https://www.afp.com/en/inside-afp

What's the point of English version if you won't find there any news?

None of those two links are news, one is fact checking category with one article per day, the other is some selfpromo about agency.

Your answer can be summed with last sentence in old Microsoft joke:

A helicopter with a pilot and a single passenger was flying around above Seattle when a malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's navigation and communications equipment.

Due to the darkness and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position and course to get back to the airport.

The pilot saw a tall building with lights on and flew toward it, the pilot had the passenger draw a handwritten sign reading, "WHERE AM I?", and hold it up for the building's occupants to see.

People in the building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window.

Their sign said, "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER."

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely.

After they were on the ground, the passenger asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position.

The pilot responded, "I knew that had to be the Microsoft support building, they gave me a technically correct but entirely useless answer."

Don't the French generally/historically despise the English and their language? That was my first assumption.

We've left the 19th c. a while back.

we have to live with our time, so we use English as needed, like at work, where nearly all communications are in English or when using sources in English.

Though some of us still can't stand some of the Anglosphere, that hasn't changed. And the average level in English isn't as good as in other Europeans countries.

so much hate for le monde in these comments! While I'm probably too familiar with US politics, I'm not familiar enough with French politics to know what it means when a french person says "globalist propaganda".

In US terminology, whoever says "globalist propaganda" also says "I don't believe Trump lost the election in 2020".

The comments who say this make me think that, probably, le monde is an excellent publication.

There are other comments that say le monde is 'oligarchy-owned' and then suggest publications that take a more left-leaning stance.

This makes me think le Monde is kind of like the New York Times. In general, they know who buys their papers, but the journalism (journalism! - the opinion pages are not journalism by definition) that the NYT does is largely good. It gets the facts and it prints them, holds their own to a high standard, and does a thorough job.

Politically, the NYT pisses off the left and the right on the regular. Does le Monde do that too? Are the vocal advocates against le Monde trying to say 'go further into an echo chamber', or are there legitimate criticisms about the process of reporting that le Monde engages in? Do they get the facts wrong often or go to press too early with a story regularly?

Apparently the 90's-early 00's was a good time for le Monde -- that happens to be when I knew about it. What has happened since?

Let's say that in the past they used to have a very clear left-wing bias, but, within that bias, the quality of their news was excellent. And they were independent.

Now, they are no longer independent (the 90's and 00's good days are over..), and you can kind of feel the nonsense they are trying to push down your throat. It's not blatantly wrong, let's say, but it is a more often than not a one-side view aligned with government lines.

For instance, somebody else mentioned a bit higher that they have a "fact-checking" column that was actually a piece of fact-twisting rubbish. And although they are not peddling lies there, per se, it is very "coincidental" that the "true" view being presented there as facts is always aligned with the global trending (government) narrative and other views are dismissed.

It doesn't mean that they are twisting facts, as what conspiracy theorists denounce as the "global narrative" is, I believe, more often than not aligned with the facts, but it's very suspicious that a "dissident" point of view never shows up in those articles.

It's the job of a true, high-quality journalist to look far beyond the facts being presented, to understand if they can be taken at face value or if, perhaps, the non-obvious or non-dominant narrative should be put forward instead. And unfortunately that's not something Le Monde can be relied on anymore.

(As recent examples of "alternative facts" that have been dismissed a bit too quickly recently, one could put forward the Biden laptop hard-drive saga or the lab-made Covid story.. Both are stories with fascinating implications if they turn out to be true, and that warrants hard journalistic questions to be asked..)

In France, if you want interesting news, you have to rely on Mediapart and Le Canard enchaîné. If you just want to keep up with what is happening in the country, Le Monde will do.

Fake news now in English... For anyone not familiar with the French version, Le Monde, at least in its digital incarnation, is pure state/oligarch propaganda. Each and every article and editorial is published to push a narrative, the same you heard on other channels (public TV and radion, etc.) anyway. Don't waste your time reading it or even spending money on it. Their section Les décodeurs ("fact"-"checking") is even most specialized in the twisting of facts and reality to reach a predetermined conclusion. It's a little less obvious than Kremlin's propaganda, but only slightly.

The only use I have for this newspaper, which I consult a few times a week, is getting informed of what the government and CAC40 top's CEOs want me to think, then I think the reverse.

what the fuck are you talking about

How about LeMon.de in German?

i think they downvoted you, because lemon.de is not using ssl ;-)

I was learning French so I could read Le Monde. Kind of a bummer ;)

I doubt they will cease publication.

Don't waste your French reading stuff like that. Not only are they passable journalists, their prose isn't even nice to read.

lol. Better read 20 minutes right?

Better than 20 minutes isn't a high bar to pass

Le Monde Diplo is still great. And hey - there’s an absolutely superb French literary canon to explore. imo that’s reason enough to learn - assuming you’re interested.

I welcome the addition of different stories, but considering Le Monde already tries to copy the New York Times in style and content, I'm not sure of the value proposition or the real addition of diverse stories. A French take translated into English from the original but with some inevitable delay and potential diminished nuance? Or just more clickbait titles with lists and explainers. Hmm...

The NyT already has direct lines to a virtually unlimited number of French thinkers and experts from the leading universities, so for anyone who can't read French, you can find solid coverage due to the American obsession with whatever happens in France.

le monde is oligarchy-owned garbage

le monde diplomatique and mediapart are a lot more independent, and (maybe correlated) leaning a lot more on the left

how would you assess le monde relative to the new york times?

LeMonde has the French point of view, the NewYorkTimes has the USA one. You should probably read both once in a while. I'm French and I think the NewYorkTimes tends to see everything with the USA point of view, and sometimes totally fails to understand and explain correctly. See this article from The Guardian for example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/16/macron-france-...

But LeMonde is perhaps a bit too French regarding some events such as the African wars involving France. So having the USA point of view can be useful too.

Just to inform our non-French friends here, here is what you should know about the strong political bias in the French press.

- Le Monde is a left-wing media, and most articles are heavily slanted towards socialist themes and PoV,

- The equivalent right-wing media (which Le Monde readers obviously call "fascists", the woke sensor is not very precise these days) is called Le Figaro https://lefigaro.fr

Some of the comments praise Le Monde Diplomatique, but this one is full speed communist and anti-capitalist. Its far right equivalent is Valeurs Actuelles.

Happy reading!

Le monde is considered more of a center media in france, it's true in the other hand the Le Monde Diplomatique or l'humanité [1] are left-wing medias.

Now saying that Valeurs Actuelles is the far right equivalent of Le monde diplo isn't fair. Valeurs Actuelles is the French equivalent of Fox news, politic aside the quality of the articles is usually very low.

[1] https://www.humanite.fr/

>Valeurs Actuelles is the far right equivalent of Le monde diplo isn't fair.

Le monde diplo often has long, dense articles written by scholars, in an almost academic style, with lots of references; plus they absolutely do not try to hide that they are expressing a critical/radical left point of view.

Valeurs actuelles on the other hand will publish anything without the bare minimum cross-checking: https://www.midilibre.fr/2021/03/31/separatisme-valeurs-actu...

Well, to me le monde belongs to moderate right-wing media, or at the very least enlightened centrism. It all depends on how left or right-leaning you feel I guess.

https://www.mediapart.fr/en/

You can just feed the French version through Google Translate.

Hello, World!

they spelled lemonade wrong.

>> Get unlimited access to Le Monde in English €2.49/month, cancel anytime

>> A Customer who wishes to terminate their contract must print out (or copy on plain paper) ...

So, cancel anytime by conveniently printing out and filling in a form then sending it by snail mail to their customer service dept. I think I'll pass. Too bad.

https://moncompte.lemonde.fr/cgv-en

That’s different than what’s posted in their FAQ for canceling. The FAQ suggests that it’s a simple button in the account settings.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/faq/?question=i-want-to-cancel-my-...

Said button is no doubt “in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.‘“ because we are all Arthur Dent in this Internet.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on...

I think EU regulations require that cancellation must be accessible in the same way as the subscription. So online subscriptions must have an online cancellation.

better than "phone a call center" like Barrons, Morningstar or other I have checked. Looks like editors love to keep readers tied with uneasy unsubscribe methods.

Looks like editors love to keep readers tied with uneasy unsubscribe methods.

The fact that people think editors have anything at all to do with subscriptions illustrates a lack of basic understanding of the publishing industry.

Source: At various times of my life, I've worked for two of the largest newspaper companies on the planet.

That's just the formalities most likely copy pasted from the physical edition. In reality it's just a "Cancel subscription" button.

Isn't the paper one there because of legal reasons? Like that is the proper and legal way to cancel a service. According to their FAQ it seems they have a button.

No, there is nothing in any law that mandates that. It's there for artificial churn reduction. The irony, is that if you register through a platform that takes a big share (they get less money) like the App Store or Google Play, it's then easier to cancel…

If I send a physical letter to them, they have to accept and respect my cancellation. That is what I meant. Is that not the case in France?

Oh I see, sorry for the misunderstanding. To go into more details, you need to send a LRAR, which is the only one with a legal proof and costs ~6-7€; otherwise they could pretend that you never sent it.

But my comment was on the fact that it was the only way to cancel. They could implement a system with single-click cancel (and it seems they did, here); it costs less than the current snail-mail system, and is more honest. But they don't because this system has a measurable impact on churn.

Cancelling Le Monde is a well known pain in the ass for us french users. I almost passed out thinking how hard it would be for a foreigner. Please avoid.

Pas Le Monde Diplomatique though.

Le monde diplo has no relationship to le monde afaik

Le Monde owns 51% of it [0]

[0]: https://mondediplo.com/about

Even trying to talk to a french person as a foreigner is a pain... Almost as bad as with italians, but in italy you can atleast wave with your hands, the french ignore that too, and doing it over the phone is totally impossible.

(source: live an hour drive from italy, buy cheese and pasta there, and often go to france on business).

I must admit you're right and I feel the pain for you. Sorry.

I got the perfect automatic cancellation: my credit-card expired. Worked a charm.

Oh wow. Reminds me of Wall Street Journal where you’d have to change your address to somewhere in California to gain the ability to cancel online. Otherwise you have to call, because only California has laws against such behavior.

I think you mean the New York Times, where one indeed has to play that game.

>> Oh wow. Reminds me of Wall Street Journal where you’d have to change your address to somewhere in California to gain the ability to cancel online. Otherwise you have to call, because only California has laws against such behavior.

> I think you mean the New York Times, where one indeed has to play that game.

All kinds subscription of businesses do this exact same thing or worse, so the answer is probably "both." IIRC, the (large, chain) gym nearby required cancellation either in person or by registered mail. When I complained, their sales guy unbelievably justified it because "they've had problems with people canceling other's memberships."

That said, I actually did cancel the New York Times a few years ago, and I don't remember the process being too onerous. Though I'm not allergic to speaking to someone on the phone.

After being a regular reader for years and finally getting fed up with the increasing restrictions on their paywall, I bought a digital subscription in late 2019. I could have done it through their app on iOS and - eventually - gained the ability to cancel right there if I wanted to as it's now in the App Store TOS for Reader apps, but the web offer was too good to pass up.

~$1 per week for a year, IIRC.

I think the process may be improved enough at this point that there is a web cancellation procedure available.

("Subscription Overview" when you are signed in to your account has a link to do this part.)

As for this change, I'm pleasantly surprised that they are following the "good" convention for foreign language sites that also publish in English:

E.g, https://example.{{ Insert country-specific TLD}}/en/

That said, URL's to articles are still a bit of a mess, as the this one shows...

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/2022-presidential-election/article...

Click through for the whole thing and you see `/article` is redundant and it's not just in English, the French articles follow the same weird convention.

Not sure why they've done that.

I cancelled the NYT through chat, but I'm in the EU so that might have made a difference.

Yep, or Sirius radio in Canada. Want to cancel? US customer? Click a link. Canadian? Have to phone, so they can force you to wait through a retention sales game. (Where they will offensively offer you a way lower rate than you were already paying, making you feel like a fool for not hassling them in the first place. And then after 6 months it goes back up again because you forgot to call back and threaten cancellation again. Awful dark pattern.)

*Offer with no commitment required, valid for orders placed from outside the US, Canada and France area, for all new subscriptions to the promotional offer Le Monde in English of Le Monde. After the end of the first year, the amount debited will be adjusted each year to reflect the applicable price. An email informing you of the adjusted price will be sent 2 months before the new price goes into effect. The client may cancel their subscription to Le Monde from their account.

This sort of thing, and the whole "cancel by mail" thing noted above, are why consumers see such value in buying subscriptions through Apple's evil puppy-kicking "walled garden."

Tech types don't see the value in it. But regular people do.

I subscribe to the dead tree editions of four newspapers, and several magazines. But if it's available from Apple News, I'll go there first, because I know I'm insulated from the dark side of the subscription model.

I'm completely with you here. I subscribed to the NYT for some time through Apple subscriptions. No funny business when I wanted to unsubscribe, just two clicks and my subscription stopped when the expiration date came.

> So, cancel anytime by conveniently printing out and filling in a form then sending it by snail mail to their customer service dept. I think I'll pass. Too bad.

you are not missing anything, LeMonde is one of the worst papers ever out there.

Just subscribe with a card from Privacy.com, and cancel the card when you want to cancel the subscription.

For the international offer, cancellation is possible "with one click from the subscriber’s online account" (it is in the special conditions).

The part with the registered letter (not just simple mail!) is for the regular (French) subscription. But to be fair, the best way to cancel these kinds of subscriptions where they make it hard for you is to just block the payment at your bank. In theory, you can get sued, but in practice, they will simply cancel your subscription. There are strong consumer protection laws regarding recurring subscriptions (because there is a lot abuse) and if the company wants to take it to court, they need a rock solid case otherwise it will backfire, so usually, they don't bother.

I wonder if it'd be more convenient for a French subscriber to use a VPN. Or change their address to somewhere out of France before cancelling.

Subscribing through Google Play should allow easy cancelation.

Well yeah, but it's still a very shitty practice, and just that is enough for me to not give them any money.

I think the reason is that France is much less online in these things (at least this is my experience with seeing my in-laws). They expect to subscribe and cancel via a letter, much more than online.

I've had debt collectors sent after me for not updating my card details on a subscription service, granted it's the exception but it happens and I'd imagine blocking the payment would incur a similar wrath.

>>> A Customer who wishes to terminate their contract must print out (or copy on plain paper)

I thought only Germany had this BS.

I actually found German newspapers to be comparably nice. Any country without laws prohibiting it have these behaviors.

Not papers, but everything else in Germany like gyms, telcos, etc.

Gyms and telcos in the US certainly do this type of thing, though usually not with paper forms specifically. At gyms, they often won’t let you get out of the contract no matter what you say, or they’ll say you’re free and then keep on charging you for years if you don’t notice on your credit cars bill. For telcos, they’ll make you wait on the phone through hours of waiting “for the next available representative”.

Ah yes. Don't forget to fax the paper you printed. No fax? No luck..

What's with Europe and their love of non-digital way to cancel service?

Unsubscribing should be as simple as telling your bank to stop payments.

Why is this still a thing?

That would be neat.

A hacky way to do it, I guess, would be for banks to make is really easy to spin up debit accounts. You drop exactly the right amount of money into the account, then when you want to unsubscribe just stop putting money there. I guess, though, some organizations would keep providing service and then consider you to owe them money, and eventually send it to collections... but if this was the conventional configuration for paying for accounts, I guess that sort of behavior on the part of the people looking for payments wouldn't be scalable, and so they'd have adjusted to just accepting the signal of non-payment=unsubscribe.

Lots of banks already provide this service (spin up as many unique debit cards through an app as you want), at least in Europe and Asia where I've used it. It's often marketed as being specifically for this purpose, along with extra features like locking a card to the specific merchant you plan to use it for, to guard against theft of the card number.

Are there often legal issues around not paying for services with annoying contracts? In the US it is not super uncommon to pay after consuming (this is how electricity typically works for example) or for services to offer some grace period where they'll keep providing service with the expectation that you'll pay back later. Hypothetically these companies could I guess sue you if you don't pay back later (I'm not sure actually -- more likely I guess they'd send it to collections). But if the default way to cancel a service was to just stop paying for it, then I guess companies would change how they billed (fundamentally I think paying beforehand would be more convenient for most consumers).

For subscriptions like newspapers, I think it is reasonable to expect a grace period equal to at most the billing period.

But stuff like this should be enshrined in law. See also AWS billing nightmares.

I accidentally dinged myself with a couple hundred dollar AWS bill -- surely nothing nightmarish compared to what others have gotten, but it sure was annoying.

Not a solution but a way to deal with this practice: some credit card providers allow you to create virtual cards that you can cancel any time. I do this all the time with Capital One.

https://www.capitalone.com/digital/eno/virtual-card-numbers/

I've got to the point where I won't subscribe to any of these publications now which makes me wonder if these tactics really work.

Sadly Le Monde is a shadow of its former self. The decline started about 20 years ago.

Totally agree. Back when I worked in print, in the mid nineties, there was always a copy of Le Monde around. I even still own their unique, one-off, "Le Siecle" (aka "The Century") edition (the one they edited on the day we turned into the 21st century).

But others in this thread are right: it's certainly not investigative journalism and, to me, it's fucking state sponsored globalist propaganda.

Well, I can't click "english" until I accept a cookie popup in French, so that's great.

this article is tough sledding

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/food-wine/article/2022/04/06/arnau...

Does the French version offer as laborious a ride to the end of the paragraph?

nb: pushed my way through the French version. it sparkles. night and day.

https://www.lemonde.fr/le-monde-passe-a-table/article/2022/0...

French being less French

If you are looking for a good and independant French newspaper I can really recommend Mediapart[1], they also offer an english version for some of their articles.

[1] https://www.mediapart.fr/en/english

Isn't that media just a laundering machine for foreign intelligence reports? Its founder Edwy Plenel has had access to state-level scandals out of nowhere for more than 30 years now, first and foremost the Rainbow Warrior case.

He was also Le Monde's director for 10 years, so...

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

AFAIK Plenel sources for Rainbow Warrior were french intelligence.

He got completely sidelined on the "Irlandais de Vincennes" story (which in a way is proof he's not a foreign intelligence puppet, otherwise he wouldn't have fell for it, would he?).

Anyways, Plenel aside, I'd happy if you could point out any Mediapart story that you think has been sourced or set up by foreign intelligence agencies?

I've frequently heard Mediapart is biased in a way or another (recently accused of bias by Melenchon supporters, before by LREM, Les Republicains, Front National, etc...) but absolutely never read anywhere that they are a puppet from a foreign intelligence agency.

In a nutshell, please substantiate your baseless claim.

> (which in a way is proof he's not a foreign intelligence puppet, otherwise he wouldn't have fell for it, would he?)

Nope, not at all. Did someone say "puppet" here? I'm pretty sure everyone understands how people can have beneficial cooperation and coordination behind the scenes to reach their goals, without being in such an one-dimensional relation.

> In a nutshell, please substantiate your baseless claim.

It's just my reading between the lines of 40 years of active confrontation with french intelligence and using information provided by well-protected leakers (intelligence leaks, police report leaks, judicial leaks etc.). It's pretty wild truly.

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