[dj_gitmo]

I actually like some things about the Economist and I subscribed for years. I feel like people would be better informed about the world if they read it. That said, it's absolutely dripping with ideology and you need to know how to read it. It's a cheerleader for Capitalism, kinda like the Financial Times. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thi...

[njepa]

Unfortunately I think the Economist is one of those publications where it seems authoritative until they write about something you really know about and realize it is mostly just written in an assertive style.

[FabHK]

Granted. Yet, I think about it this way: They're smart kids that have studied their PPE in Oxford and can write well, but know nothing about issue XYZ, say whether to use tabs or spaces.

But now, the issue comes up, and then they send someone out to visit a conference and speak to people and ask around who the experts in the field are, and (because they're The Economist) get an interview with, dunno, Guido van Rossum and Bill Gates and Woz and Don Knuth and Joel Spolsky and Linus and rms, and hear them out. Maybe throw in a few unnamed senior government officials and ambassadors and so on.

Then they take all their notes and condense it in one page for the magazine, providing some background, explanations, "colour" and the consensus (or factions) in the field.

Sure, if you know the subject in great depth, you'll recognise that it's not written by an expert in the field, and some details may be wrong, and maybe you don't agree with some characterisation. Yet, if you didn't know anything about the subject before, you now know vastly more than before.

I think that's valuable.

[njepa]

It isn't so much that they get details wrong. As you say they are smart. It is that they won't present the full picture. Sometimes they even do that, but come up with conclusions that aren't supported.

If they for example supported tabs they would end up writing a story how you could attribute the success of Python and Microsoft to tab usage. The quotes and the numbers would be correct and they would make a compelling case, but in the real world the difference would be marginal at best.

[NeedMoreTea]

There I disagree. When they write on things I know about - like science and tech - they do a far better job of being accurate than most others. They are one of a very few that I don't start by presuming they misunderstand the science, statistics or facts of the matter.

On conclusions, or political consequence, or what should be done there we can agree or disagree. On opinion we can disagree stridently - their stance is not of the right, or simple "capitalist cheerleading", nor of the left, so even there we can agree or disagree surprisingly sometimes.

I know their stance and view - they make it very plain, have run several features explaining it, and even discuss it on their About page. So even when we do disagree on conclusion I find it mostly a rational view from the other side of the fence.

Pick something like The Telegraph to get a "cheerleader for capitalism". It infects everything, even the footie, and damn the facts. If it's science or tech they're very unlikely to have understood. Thirty years ago they were more like the Economist - we may vehemently disagree on some points, agree on others, but their core facts and striving for accuracy were reasonable.

[FabHK]

It's not an uncritical cheerleader, though. They do support free trade and globalisation, yes, but also drug legalisation, gun control, carbon taxes, gay marriage, etc.

For US presidential elections, they endorsed Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

[jjeaff]

Are you implying that because their record of presidential endorsements have a (D) after their name, we can thus infer they are critical thinkers?

[FabHK]

No, that was a second point: The Economist is often portrayed as a right-wing or libertarian magazine, and I think that's an unfair and inaccurate portrayal. The list of endorsements supports that (unstated) point.

(EDIT: typos)

[hollandheese]

They are a right-wing magazine (i.e. ardently pro-capitalist). Their endorsements support that idea. All of those candidates that they supported were also ardent supporters of capital.

[skybrian]

This is kind of a weird critique though. It's like, it's not enough for a movie critic to think some movies are bad and they should have been made better. They have to hate the whole concept of movies.

[jjeaff]

Or more like, to be a true critical, you can only like the stuff that no one has ever heard of.

"Oh me, yes, I'm very liberal. I'd tell you about what candidate I support, but you've probably never heard of them..."

[FabHK]

If you want to call the candidates from the left party in the US right-wing, sure (when you look at it on a global scale, you might have a point there).

But as I said, while The Economist supports free trade and free markets, they are not laissez-faire, but support sensible regulation, anti-trust, action on climate, etc.

> "The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability." [1]

> Is The Economist left- or right-wing? Neither. We consider ourselves to be in the "radical centre" [2]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20090228231949/http://www.econom...

[2] https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/09/02/...

https://web.archive.org/web/20190329063026/https://www.econo...

[thelasthuman]

Considering the shift in the Overton window the last 50 years in the USA, radically center is right wing.

[scarface74]

What exactly does an anti-capitalist look like that would be considered something that most Americans would recognize?