[jfb]

People who don't regularly read The Economist probably ought to. It wears its biases on its sleeve, and is the only place in the English language press to find quality, in-depth coverage of parts of the world other than the Lower East Side and the Isle of Dogs.

[pradocchia]

Let's not forget their stalwart support of war with Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.

Well-written obits and cultural pieces are one thing. Propaganda to turn the minds of Anglo-American movers and shakers is quite another.

[jfb]

Absolutely. And they never cloaked it in faux-objective reportage of the sort that Judith Miller and her ilk rammed down the throats of American newspaper readers under the guise of "just the facts, ma'am" style journalism.

The Economist has repudiated its support for the war; has the Times repudiated theirs?

[Swannie]

Exactly. I remember reading an article from an outgoing editor of The Economist. He said there was an unwritten rule: 80% fact, 20% opinion, but that opinion should be clearly stated as such.

I usually find the opinions quite easy to notice and consider apart from the facts.

[p0ppe]

[The Arab spring] was certainly not inspired by the invasion of Iraq (which this newspaper, wrongly certain that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, strongly supported). Most Arabs opposed the invasion, dismissed Iraq’s new government as a puppet and resented George Bush’s “freedom agenda”.

- September 11th 2001 - Ten years on (http://www.economist.com/node/21528258)

[rwmj]

It's wasn't clear at the time (pre-2003) that it was going to end up as a catastrophe. Furthermore the Economist always mentions now that they supported the invasion -- they've never sought to hide the fact.

[fl3tch]

If you are not aware of the many, loud critics during the lead up to the invasion, then you need a more diverse portfolio of news sources. Scott Ritter alone, remember him? He was an actual intelligence officer and weapons inspector who spent years in Iraq, and who went on TV numerous times during the lead up, strongly arguing that an invasion would be a disaster. So yeah, it was plenty clear to many people.

[dextorious]

Actually it was perfectly, perfectly clear, both that it would end up as a catastrophe as well as the motives for having it

[speleding]

At the time it was far from clear that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destructions. In fact, there was ample proof he had used those weapons previously on Kurds and American intelligence reports claimed he had more where those came from (which turned out to be false, of course, but who knew). There was no way to know that Bush would bungle the whole rebuilding phase and let Iraq slide into anarchy.

Hindsight is always 20/20. At least they owe up to the fact that they changed their opinion, I know lots of politicians who'd rather chose to rewrite history instead.

[pedrolll]

Please don't write anarchy when you mean chaos.

[speleding]

When the Iraqi army was dissolved there was no recognized form of government left, the very definition of anarchy. Chaos did indeed ensue.

[dextorious]

"""At the time it was far from clear that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destructions. In fact, there was ample proof he had used those weapons previously on Kurds and American intelligence reports claimed he had more where those came from (which turned out to be false, of course, but who knew)."""

Everybody in the world knew, except American's watching FOX News and giving any basis on Bush era "intelligence reports". Weapons of mass destruction, my ass. Just an excuse to attack on the same man that was a valid us ally for decades (like in Iraq/Iran war era).

[cjy]

I debated the WMD topic in high school pre-Iraq war and the expert consensus was that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Arguing otherwise was a losing debate. It may have been obvious that invading Iraq would be disastrous, but it wasn't obvious that they didn't have WMD. The experts had little information and were misinformed.

The tone of your response to the OP is belittling and adds little to discussion of what experts knew or thought they knew. You think the Economist relied solely on Fox News and Bush intelligence when believing that Iraq had WMDs?

[lemming]

For Americans, perhaps. The Guardian is also excellent - I subscribe to their weekly and it's fantastic.

[jfb]

The Guardian is excellent, but I maintain that The Economist is the best newspaper on the planet, at least in English, even as my politics are much more consonant with The Guardian.

[james1071]

Disagree.The Financial Times is much better than those two, which are pretty patchy.

[cschmidt]

Yes, indeed. It is truly the smart person's news source. There's also an audio edition, where they read the entire issue word for work, which is the best way to spend a long commute. (It takes 8 hours or so.) It is free for subscribers of either the print or online editions.

[jamesbritt]

And they have a very nice app for subscribers as well.

[ansy]

I disagree with the Economist's lack of by-lines. Also, it has more of a dogmatic free market ideology than a bias [1]. Whether you agree with that ideology or not, I think it is bad journalism.

The Economist basically puts itself on the same level of China's People's Daily nationalist newspaper. Not matter how good the writing might be, it is just propaganda of a different sort.

[1] http://www.economist.com/help/about-us#About_The_Economist

[InclinedPlane]

The difference being that there is a metric pants-load of evidence of the free market system producing better results in terms of individual wealth, individual liberty, life expectancy, and quality of life than other systems. You are basically saying that both the journal Nature and Astrology Today both have a heavy degree of dogmatism (one in the scientific method, the other in superstition) and that puts them on equal footing.

[anon1385]

The difference is that Nature will change their position (as much as they have an editorial position) as new facts come to light. I was never convinced by the argument that the scientific method is like a religion when it came from creationists and I'm not any more convinced when free-market fundamentalists use it as an excuse to ignore facts. (I won't disagree with your comparison of the Economist to Astrology Today other than to say that I find the Economist to be much better written).

>there is a metric pants-load of evidence of the free market system producing better results in terms of individual wealth, individual liberty, life expectancy, and quality of life than other systems

There is also plenty of empirical evidence that free market fundamentalism has produced worse outcomes. The academic literature is full of such analysis. An example:

Stiglitz, J.E, 2004, "Capital-market Liberalization, Globalization, and the IMF", Oxf Rev Econ Policy (2004) 20 (1): 57-71. http://oxrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/1/57.abstract (PDF: http://www.relooney.info/00_New_951.pdf )

One of the most controversial aspects of globalization is capital-market liberalization—not so much the liberalization of rules governing foreign direct investment, but those affecting short-term capital flows, speculative hot capital that can come into and out of a country. In the 1980s and 1990s, the IMF and the US Treasury tried to push capital-market liberalization around the world, encountering enormous opposition, not only from developing countries, but from economists who were less enamoured of the doctrines of free and unfettered markets, of market fundamentalism, that were at that time being preached by the international economic institutions. The economic crises of the late 1990s and early years of the new millennium, which were partly, or even largely, attributable to capital-market liberalization, reinforced those reservations. This paper takes as its point of departure a recent IMF paper, to provide insights both into how the IMF could have gone so wrong in its advocacy of capital-market liberalization and into why capital-market liberalization has so often led to increased economic instability, not to economic growth.

It might be interesting to go back and look at how the Economist reported on the IMF paper discussed at the start of that article (the FT reported on it, so it seems to have had mainstream awareness). I'm not sure which is better: ignoring it completely, or reporting it but ignoring the content and continuing on with an editorial policy that contradicts the things being reported in the same paper.

Edit: I agree with JDShu below when (s)he says

There is a difference between the free market dogmatism displayed in the Economist, and the simple idea that the free market works better than planned economies. And yes, free markets fail, this is a staple idea in economics.

I'm not suggesting that the Economist should be come Marxism Today, or that they should not advocate the many positives of free markets, but that dogmatic adherence to financial deregulation is not a neutral position that is backed up by facts; it has plenty of problems, as most economists will tell you.

[davidw]

> dogmatic adherence to financial deregulation is not a neutral position that is backed up by facts; it has plenty of problems, as most economists will tell you.

Is that something they advocate? From actually reading it, that's not the impression I get.

[ansy]

Good journalism in my book attempts to report the truth objectively no matter the subject. By-lines are an important part of that. It puts the author out there so his or her biases and conflicts of interests are not protected.

The Economists shields its authors from scrutiny and lends its credibility to who knows who. How do I know if the writer of an article criticizing one industry doesn't have interests in its rival? Or is a person of one political party criticizing a political opponent? Is it "The Economist" criticizing the Democratic Party in this article or is it penned by the hand of Karl Rove?

Second and most importantly, like I said, even if you agree with free markets, it is one thing to agree with them. It is another thing to close yourself off from alternatives.

The truth is key. Remaining objective is key. If there is evidence of the free markets working, by all means report it. But don't glorify it. And if there is evidence of free markets failing, report that, too. Don't hide it. Don't apologize for it. Report the truth. Journalism isn't about believing in something. It's about reporting what happens. The Economist is about believing in free markets. Therefore it is bad journalism, but it is good propaganda. If The Economist was about objectively reporting on politics and economics and just happened to have positive articles about free markets because there really is positive evidence to report, I would forgive it. But that isn't the case, so I can't.

EDIT: I realize people are misinterpreting my criticism to be about The Economist's ideology. It is not. My criticism is that it has an ideology. That's propaganda not journalism by most commonly understood definitions of propaganda and journalism.

[jfb]

I don't believe that objective journalism is either possible or desirable. The best that can be done is a clear statement of bias along with well-researched and cogently argued opinion; you get this in The Guardian and The Economist, but in American journalism, you see the miserable contortions that people put themselves through to provide "objective" reporting on a world that is anything but.

In the end, you have to decide for yourself. I feel that the English papers (including the FT) give me better tools to this end than even the vaunted Times.

[InclinedPlane]

Indeed. In the ultimate attainment "objective" journalism is nothing more than performance art. There's nothing wrong with journalism having a perspective, so long as people are aware of it.

Open and honest journalism is achievable, objective journalism is not.

[uiy887]

This is just completely absurd and just shows complete ignorance of economics. Among economists (yes, I am one), there are no longer debates about free markets. Krugman and DeLong, both heavy and prominent Democratic supporters, heavily support free trade. Krugman, for instance, "likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against evolution via natural selection." [1] The current Administration's economic policy team are all free market advocates. Even Obama calls himself a "fierce" free market advocate. [2] I really can't find any economist who doesn't advocate free markets.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

[JDShu]

There is a difference between the free market dogmatism displayed in the Economist, and the simple idea that the free market works better than planned economies. And yes, free markets fail, this is a staple idea in economics.

That said, i agree with others that I don't think the biases in the Economist are a problem. They make their opinions very obvious.

[mc32]

I agree with JFB here. It's impossible to be completely objective. There is bias in everything --so it's a fool's errand to try and think one can achieve that.

As many have stated, they have their biases, but they don't hide them. I have the utmost respect for them. They don't shy away form their mistakes and readily admit to them, unlike others who try to explain their mistakes away.

[jimbokun]

Can you give me a list of these perfectly objective sources of journalism? I'd like to read them.

[bodyfour]

I can't argue that their ideological bent is pretty strong (and not one I altogether share, really) but the financial and international reporting is consistently superb. Even though I disagree with them often, I always learn something in the process.

[nobody31415]

it's not like they hide their ideology though - the paper is called the economist!

Oddly enough they and The Telegraph (the most conservative UK daily) were the only places with decent science reporting, which is an interesting difference with 'conservative' in the USA

[davidw]

> conservative

The Economist is very free-market, but they are not 'conservatives' in the US sense at all. I think the label that best fits them is the European meaning of "liberal". They support some sort of universal health care, gay marriage, drug legalization, science not based on the bible, and other things that send the right wing in the US into apoplectic fits.

I heartily agree with the recommendation of subscribing.

[nhaehnle]

> it's not like they hide their ideology though - the paper is called the economist!

Economics as a field is in a sad state, isn't it? You basically stated outright that being an economist implies following an ideology, and nobody contradicted you.

Unless you water down the meaning of "ideology" to the point where you would call scientists' adherence to the scientific method "ideological", that's a pretty scathing indictment of the current state of economics as a science.

Just something to reflect on from time to time...

[bodyfour]

It's also amusing/scary how many U.S. 'conservatives' consider The Economist to be some sort of lefty-pinko rag.

[keithpeter]

Economist left of centre? I'd suggest you hide some other UK publications carefully unless your conservatives have heart attacks.