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Comment by forapurpose | Hacker News Reader

The same thought crossed my mind the other day, but thinking through it I remembered, for print journalism: the Financial Times (which I think has a claim on 'best journalism in English'), The Guardian, and The Economist. In the U.S. a country ~4 times the size, there is only the New York Times and the Washington Post on that level (IMHO; there's also Time, Bloomberg, and others; and we're omitting Reuters, the AP, and many more in other categories).

I think the situation in the UK is similar to the US for print journalism (whatever that means these days), with a few large blocks:

* A few top-notch publications

* Far right propaganda, substantially from Murdoch / News Corp.

* A bunch of middling, substantially ineffectual stuff

(I know these are broad generalizations, with many exceptions.)

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The Economist is terrible. It's just the same neo-liberal slant on everything. Read one article of theirs and you are done.

FT is really weak. Go check out the FT comments some time - none of their readers understand how markets work nor how prices are set. You know why? Because they read the FT and the FT never talks about any of this. All they have is what appears to be in depth but is simply parroting numbers.

Guardian I have more time for but they are frustrating. They tell the truth right up to the point where it comes to talking about the banks and how land is used to extract labour, then they melt away. Which in the UK is everything.

UK journalism has fallen so far. Telegraph for example you could label propaganda - it's right wing. But it's so trashy now. And this is mirrored across all publications.

> The Economist is terrible. It's just the same neo-liberal slant on everything

That's a really common prejudice, and not born out by the actual paper, in my view. As just one example, in the US presidential elections, The Economist has endorsed G W Bush, but then Kerry, Obama, Obama, and Clinton.

It's still the best newspaper around, in my view, for concise, opinionated updates on a wide range of global issues.

FT is better than WSJ, but that's not saying much.

Guardian has some good reporting, and is worth supporting, though I disagree with some of their editorialising.

One big difference between The Economist and German papers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) is: The Economist is capable of admitting that it was wrong in the past. The financial news section of the FAZ, on the other hand, will deride anyone who does not agree with them ideologically, and then, when it turns out they had been wrong from the get go, pretend they were on the other side of the argument.

I have the feeling journalists in Germany still think there is something like completely objective reporting. A kind of gold standard you achieve by adhering to a certain method, with everyone coming to the one and only correct conclusion. Anyone who does not must be inept or not a real journalist in the first place.

>The Economist is capable of admitting that it was wrong in the past.

Just like every economist in the history of economics

US also has the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harpers, and a few other very good monthlies.

I read an article in the New Yorker recently about a guy chasing info on squid, just excellent. So well written.

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