[dredmorbius]

The Economist does in fact have a marked and explicit editorial mission to promote free trade principles, set forth in their Prospectus[1], specifically, that "ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day—political events—and parliamentary discussions; and particularly to all such as relate immediately to revenue, commerce, and agriculture; or otherwise affect the material interests of the country", and "POPULAR MOVEMENTS: A report and account of all popular movements throughout the country in favour of Free Trade."

Unlike some organisations (e.g., NewsCorp), these biases are at least explicitly stated, if not widely known.

While I generally respect it, I find its skew at times quite painful to swallow. At least the writing is generally well executed.

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Notes:

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

[fweespeech]

There is a world of difference between a group with the integrity to state its biases publicly and one that hides them in a dozen puppet papers.

[dredmorbius]

Well, yes, but that wasn't my argument.

It also doesn't address any unstated biases The Economist Group might have.

[fweespeech]

I don't believe they have unstated biases on an institutional scale. Individual author may have biases but all of them do.