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Comment by StevePerkins | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

The Economist is pretty decent altogether.

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