[fmajid]

The Economist is to the City of London (the financial center masquerading as a local authority, not the metropolis) what Pravda was to the Soviet Communist Party. Useless as a source of truth, but invaluable to find out who was going to be purged and you should disown stat. Similarly The Economist is useful as a barometer of conventional wisdom in as very specific demographic. Their science and arts section can be very good at times, however.

[seanmcdirmid]

I find that publications aimed at business people to be a bit more reliable since their readers jobs are to make money and not have their biases confirmed. If the media isn’t useful in helping them make money (by giving them too much bad information), they will simply stop using it.

Of course, making money doesn’t necessarily mean having access to the best unbiased information, sometimes it simply means onboarding onto a bias before everyone else does (aka market intelligence).

[estearum]

This is why (in the US anyway) The Business Journals are fantastic. Also, they're extremely localized, which is most stuff of direct relevance anyway. Absolutely love those publications.

[Gimpei]

The Pravda parallel is a stretch. It's definitely opinion, but they do consult actual research and more so than most other English language publications. As a social scientist I think they do a better job of treating research than the NY Times or the New Yorker. Often I get the sense the journalists at those publications haven't seen a number since high school. That being said, if you think the kind of statistics based research that comes out of social sciences is all bunk, we live in different worlds and will have to agree to disagree.