What The Economist doesn't tell you | Hacker News Reader

What The Economist doesn't tell you

prospectmagazine.co.uk

71 pointskristianc67 comments

The thing about The Economist - there are small handful of topics, I do know something about. When The Economist writes about them, I tend to think "hey, that's a pretty good article". That tends to give me confidence in the quality of the rest of its coverage.

I don't always agree with it, but it's at least well argued and thought provoking.

Prospect is quite possibly the only other magazine for which I'd say the same, to be fair.

I agree. It's really good magazine considering how wide the scope it covers. Economist is clearly has point of view I don't nessesarlily agree with, but it's not any less high quality journalism because of it. Their viewpoint comes mostly from omission of subjects, focus and weighting of different things. Something any intelligent reader can live with.

Michael Chrichton wrote about this syndrome. When the economist writes about my job, IT, it is usually pretty good. When it writes about my country, Finland, it is sometimes a bit shallow, but the facts are still right.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

As another Finn I don't think it's shallow - I would call it terse. The facts speak for themselves. Like when describing the rabid gambling problem our country has due to state monopoly and broken incentives on public safety versus financial gains.

Just to note, he writes about the exact opposite of what is happening here.

This actually sounds like the opposite of what Michael Crichton described. The Gell-Mann Amnesia occurs when, due to your domain expertise, you are able to see when a publication display a complete lack of understanding on the topic they are covering, yet despite this continue to assume that the publication is qualified to cover topics outside your narrow area of domain expertise. (It is, in a certain sense, a refusal to believe the evidence of your own eyes: you see that a publication has no credibility, yet continue to assume that it has credibility for some reason.)

The effect described by the poster you're responding to is the opposite of that, and actually how credibility is presumed to normally work: you see that a publication get things right in a narrow domain that you have a lot of expertise in (and thus are qualified to identify which publications are purveyors of truth), and extrapolate that and assume, "if this one story is of impressive quality, then there's a good chance the rest of the publication is held to a similar standard." This is how a publication earns a badge of trustworthiness.

This has been exactly my feeling as well. I have found no other general-interest publication where I can read articles about my areas of expertise and not cringe.

Have you looked at The Atlantic? I keep coming across articles from it and have the same feeling about them as I do The Economist, but I’m not a subscriber to The Atlantic so I don’t really kno

I had the opposite experience. I read an article I know a lot about once and, although factually correct, the whole thing was wrong because of what they left out and because of the smug 1st world conclusions they drew as a result. I don't know if they left out those facts because it didn't fit with the tone of the magazine of if they failed to do their research properly. I came to the conclusion that it was the former and from that point on I just couldn't trust anything I read from that magazine. They have this way of making the reader feel smug about the knowledge that they are picking up from the magazine without ever challenging the reader's core beliefs. What I am saying is that the magazine is never disagreeable for the reader. It's like only having friends who share your world view. How much are you missing out by not extending your reach?

Doesn't seem to be a reasonable stance to label an entire publication to be untrustable just because you feel it left out from an otherwise factual and subjective data point that you feel strongly about. If sounds a lot like you wanted an echo chamber but as you didn't experienced a specific echo then you just preferred to move onward.

Cherry picking facts that strengthen only one side of an argument is as bad, or even worse than getting the facts wrong. "Wrong facts" are easily caught. Facts that are omitted or those that are presented without context are only discernible to someone who knows the subject, and otherwise appears balanced and well argued to anyone who isn't an expert.

Pointing out the omission of facts isn't "wanting an echo chamber".

> Cherry picking facts

OP's assertion was that the literature review didn't went as deep as he felt like it should with regards to a single data point.

That's not remotely comparable to cherry picking.

Read again:

> I don't know if they left out those facts because it didn't fit with the tone of the magazine of if they failed to do their research properly

> I came to the conclusion that it was the former

OP is explicit that they left out facts that didn't "fit the tone of their magazine". That's pretty much the definition of cherry picking. And leaving out facts always has the advantage of falling back on plausible deniability.

I don’t think it’s an echo chamber to tell both sides of a story. Maybe you can’t tell every possible fact from every viewpoint but deliberate exclusion can be just as bad as false facts. NYT hides one side of the story because it doesn’t fit their editorial viewpoint. It would be better solved to get more political diversity into the news room.

> I don’t think it’s an echo chamber to tell both sides of a story.

But that was not OP's complain. The OP just feels strongly about an issue, and just because a publication known for publishing terse and non-in-depth but otherwise correct articles managed to not cover a detail the OP's feels strongly about... That doesn't mean it is biased, doesn't it?

In the end,if you think about it, the OP is just complaining that the publication doesn't share his personal bias, and the OP feels so strongly and is so adamant in pushing his personal world view that a single slip in a single article published in a single edition is interpreted as an offense so aggravating that he accuses the whole publication of not being trusted.

This alone says more about the accusers than the target of these baseless accusations.

Interesting. Because I've several times come by articles in the Economist on subjects that I know, which argue a divisive point based on certain facts. But more often than not, the "facts" presented are deliberately one-sided and distorted by the act of omission.

I had the opposite experience. The Economist is the least credible repporting source for me.

> The Economist is the least credible repporting source for me.

The Sun? The Daily Mail? The Telegraph? The Guardian? The UK has a wide range of shitty print media and The Economist is better than most of them.

The Economist is a very good illustration of two distinctions:

- "liberal" is not the same as "left", even if both of them have often been aligned against "Toryism"

- "ideological bias" and "intellectual dishonesty" are not the same thing

The liberal pro-market bias of the Economist is something they don't hide, and is fundamental both to their opinion pieces and the subjects they cover. However, they generally haven't surrendered to the temptation to make stuff up or ignore inconvenient facts. They don't really do demonisation of opponents or scapegoats. They are capable of reviewing their own coverage in retrospect (things like predicting the last thirteen of two housing price crashes).

It's possible to read an economist article where you disagree with their angle but still feel that you've learned something and they've made a useful contribution to the discussion. The number of news sources where this is true has shrunk dramatically; the only other one I'd name from US-UK media is the FT. Honorable mention to the Irish Times.

By half way through the article, I haven't seen one decent argument presented to justify the author's dislike of The Economist. Instead, this is just an invitation to go boo, hiss when the reader hears the wake-word 'liberal'.

Searching the page for "liberal" gives 41 hits, searching for "economist" gives 42 hits. It's very hard to take the article seriously even after reading just the first sentence:

> The publication has a sublime — even smug — self-confidence in its elite liberal worldview.

What ever they're proposing may very well have merit, but in that tone, there's little interest to hear the case out.

The person writting the article doesn't really know what the word sublime means for a start.

Well, I wouldn't be so quick with the accusations. One of the Cambridge Dictionary's example sentences for the word sublime is He possesses sublime self-confidence: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sublime

As a subscriber to the Economist, I fully concur with the line you take offense with. It is very self-assured in its worldview. Pointing that out should not be controversial.

Yes, the fact that Economist has an obvious political stand should not be taken as a bug - it's a feature. Their fact-based journalism is excellent, and when they take a stand on an issue, it's obvious and not hidden inside some fake statistics or pseudoscience.

As a sometime-reader I find the clear worldview refreshing. While clearly CNN has a particular worldview, they constantly try to remind people that they don't hold that worldview, in order to convince people they are impartial. Same goes for basically any media, the different is between if it's clear or if they are trying to seem impartial while not being so.

I'd much rather news organizations be clear about their view, so I as a reader can keep that in mind and also look at the opposition view, because that other news organization would also be clear that they do hold the opposition view.

It's what frustrates me whenever I read an Economist piece. Their absolute certainty in declaring what should be done about any particular topic is jarring. The 'pretend you are God' line in the article is exactly the problem.

But that is the exact description of the tone the magazine uses in its opinion pieces. Unlike most of the news outlets, they don't confuse facts with opinions. You know exactly which type of article you are reading thanks to that tone.

Here's a link to an article from the economist: "We need a post-liberal order now The international, rules-based system is collapsing. Overhauling it means combining national identity with a global ethos, says Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and author" https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/26/we-need-a-p...

I don't think that's an actual article from The Economist. They describe Open Future[1] as a festival in which you, "Hear discussions and debates mediated by journalists from The Economist and talks by prominent figures from across the political spectrum, as well as contributions from innovators, entrepreneurs, critics and connoisseurs."

The Economist's own articles don't typically have bylines like that one does, and the "Copyright © Yuval Noah Harari 2018" at the bottom suggests to me that it was an outside contribution to their festival. Maybe as the topic starter for their online debate event?

[1]: https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/04/16/a-letter-to...

I don't know if only reading half of an article is a good strategy to measure the worth of the article. Noticeably before the half-way mark, I saw three things: support of slave-holding south, support of the Suharto regime, and support of Pinochet. I feel like throwing political opponents out of helicopters is a little more than "just an invitation to go boo, hiss when the reader hears the wake-word 'liberal'."

Throwing opponents from helicopters is about the most extravagant means of execution short of keeping them on death row for decades. (But look which the US prefers.)

Whataboutism, and totally uncalled for.

Mentioning the US slouching toward authoritarianism is "whataboutism", now?

Nobody is throwing people out of helicopters now, but the US now tortures dissenters in solitary, while China is harvesting potential dissenters' organs for sale. None of it is pleasant to contemplate, but we in the US are at least in a better position to stop ours, if we care enough to.

On the topic of The Economist. I have been a subscriber twice, but each time cancelled because I was endlessly behind on the huge number of quality articles.

I am however yet again considering subscription. But are there any other good physical magazines to consider? I have considered The New Yorker as well, but I need to research whether I can have that delivered to Denmark. But any other suggestions given that I really like in depth articles on diverse topics. Not necessarily latest news also just interesting long-form stories.

I was the same. Once I paid for it I felt I had to get my moneys worth but there is a lot to get through every week. I tend to read it at the library now (well until the thing arrived on our shores).

Yes, even though I am a very active reader, I felt that I almost had a month worth of reading every week.

The Economist is my favorite reading material when flying, which I don't do enough to sustain a subscription.

I wish they (and others!) would release an essentials podcast w/ a reasonable subscription -- a succinct (1-2h?) presentation capturing the important articles' facts, theses, and arguments.

I've heard good things about "Delayed Gratification." It's a quarterly magazine that "revisits the events of the last three months to offer in-depth, independent journalism in an increasingly frantic world."

That looked too interesting to pass. I signed up immediately for the print magazine delivered to my door, every quarter. Thanks a lot for mentioning that. I really look forward to seeing it in person!

> Do read it. But don’t start with the leaders. Start at the back where the world often appears in a less tidy and more truly thought-provoking form.

I think this is a good takeaway.

I have been reading The Economist for ~ 10 years, a period in which my world view has shifted quite a bit. In the beginning, while still in high school, I essentially treated The Economist as the word of God (it's funny to see that that's actually what they were going for: when one young recruit was facing the challenge of composing their first leader, the advice they received from a senior editor was simple: “Pretend you are God.” ). I had no awareness that the publication followed an ideological line, I simply thought that that was the truth and everything going against it was simply wrong.

After having left my native country to study and subsequently work in a bunch of different places, personal experience has clarified a lot of the misunderstandings I had about Western capitalist societies.

I continue to read The Economist in its entirety every week, but I now see it partly as a source of information about current events and partly as the mouthpiece of the current ruling class.

As long as you are able to correct for its biases and to not get too annoyed when they are blatantly partisan, The Economist is still a very useful and sometimes entertaining read.

what do you mean "able to correct its bias"?

I used the expression to correct for bias, which is a collocation coming out of, I would guess, statistics (see for example: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/142875/what-does-to-... ).

What I meant was that if you're aware that The Economist has a clear ideological lens through which it sees the world you can take that into account and take its comments with a grain of salt. Initially I was not aware of their clear ideological stance and I took it to be an objective publication.

This being said it's probably not possible to have an objective publication, so it's better to read one that is written competently and subsequently correct for its bias.

I seem to recall they came out in favour of the Iraq war, which in hindsight didn't turn out to be particularly astute. Surprised to see no mention of that.

It's in the article "The Economist has never seen a war it didn't like"

That sounds like a blanket statement that needs a few citations, to say the least.

Do you have a link to their coverage at the time? Would be interesting to see their reasoning.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2003/...

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/07/17/the-case-for-wa...

I think the magazine actually apologized later. They said they were wrong about Iraq.

But many others too, including me, genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein was going to continue using poison gas, and was trying to create a nuclear weapon. I actually believe that the CIA and US were genuinely believing so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial_stance

I seem to recall they came out in favour of the Iraq war

They also continued to criticize how that war was handled throughout and later admitted they where wrong to come out in favor of it.

I wouldn't have put Keynes and Hayek in the same group but I guess that's partly the point the author is trying to make. The 2 couldn't be more different from each other.

> The Economist was founded by the liberal Scottish banker James Wilson as a mouthpiece of the movement for free trade.

I like how they make spreading ideals of Freedom sound like a bad thing.

How's that working out with ventilators and masks? Not so peachy.

You could carry on to the next sentences:

> This was originally a broad church stretching from radicals like Richard Cobden and John Bright to the cotton interests of Manchester. But that coalition frayed as Wilson opposed assistance to Ireland during the famine and backed the authoritarian usurper Napoleon III following the 1848 revolution in France.

"Free trade" tends to mean a very specific kind of freedom for a very specific set of people.

This article has all the qualities of a first year degree takedown.

Interrogative opening sentence, desperate latching on to Historical precedent(vis a vi Germany and China, use of the word Bromide and or idolatory and conflating Government policies and political movements by dint of shared temporal space.

The economist is broad magazine, the book was written about the editorial the leaders, and the review is an attack of convserative led liberal thinking.

In my expert opinion (of nothing), this article is yucky.

Looks like there's an organized "smug attack" going on against The Economist. I wonder who's trying to undermine its credibility?

I've been reading the Economist for a couple of decades and while it's not perfect smugness is not prominent amongst its vices.

The article seems to summarize, but doesn't name, Alexander Zevin's book, Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52105758-liberalism-at-l... ).

Odd opinion piece hit job on The Economist. Wonder how often the author had pieces rejected.

I don't believe they do open submission. They have a small staff, and (almost uniquely) no bylines. Many pieces have multiple authors. The opinion writers are the same from week to week but under pseudonyms.

The opinion writers are the same from week to week but under pseudonyms.

Also worth clarifying that while the opinion pieces are written under pseudonym they are not anonymous and they make no secret about who is behind each pseudonym.

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