Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmk | Hacker News Reader

The Economist is a great magazine ("newspaper", as they like to call themselves). The emphasis is on presenting facts and educate the reader without any of the proselytizing and moralizing of the major American newspapers. I also love the Wall Street Journal, which is the American newspaper that comes closest to The Economist, save its increasingly shrill editorials and opinion columns.

Can anyone who grew up here explain why Americans prefer partisan media? It boggles my mind and is something I have failed to understand. Elsewhere in the world, being biased is taken as an insult, whereas here, news organizations seem to take pride in it!

View on HN

It's incorrect to state that the Economist doesn't have a bias: it leans consistently toward free trade, free markets, open borders, and international institutions.

Some of the limits are due to the way that media is regulated in others countries (vs. not regulated at all in the US). In the UK for instance, the major broadcasters have a public service remit, and can be challenged easily via libel laws, regulation etc if they print something which is overtly incorrect. In the US, that is less the case which means that news has evolved into a kind of entertainment rather than a source of information.

Their position is the globalist hyper-elite (like Martin Wolf in the FT...they all go to Bildeberg). This overlaps heavily with the free market viewpoint but over the past five years or so, it has become heavily diluted in some areas (for example, regulations and fiscal policy...their view tends to match with whatever the IMF thinks, and tends to be fairly reactionary because these ideas have a history of not working...tbh, these views aren't coherent anymore, they make no sense).

It is fair to say that once you descend below the editorials, you will find more interesting viewpoints. But all of the leaders and editorial pieces are totally anodyne. Imo, this is an editorial decision that changed in 2015, and it has got significantly worse.

I love the Economist, but they're not "non-partisan". They're simply upfront about their bias.

I think that’s the point, though. They have a biased worldview - they own that and highlight it regularly - but that bias doesn’t align with any American political party, and I don’t get the sense that it is particularly well aligned with existing parties in the UK either.

They're Lib-Dems.

But only by exclusion. The Economist speaks from a classical/neo liberal viewpoint. Civil liberties, free markets, laissez faire, technocracy. Labour is too statist for them, and the Conservatives are currently too populist (and incompetent). The Economist's position lines up pretty well with the Orange Book wing of the Lib-Dems [1], but much less well with the SDP / social liberal wing.

They have backed all three major parties in general elections in the last twenty years [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Book:_Reclaiming_Li...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial_stance...

“Non-partisan” is not the same thing as non-ideological.

This is a good point. Where the Economist is aligned with, say, the Tories, it's because they both support the same ideas, not because my-party-is-right. (Nowadays the Tories have shifted pretty damn far from those ideas, so it's more apparent that it's ideology that the Economist has, not a partisan affiliation.)

Indeed. I think from the American point of view they seem to be so centered that it can fall both ways.

For the UK i see them clearly as hardcore liberal democrats.

I think that in the south Europe political landscape they would be orphaned as there even the center parties are not very economically liberal.

I think you can be biased but also non-partisan. Partisan is usually referred to in terms of being an the side of a particular party. The Economist definitely has its bias, but that doesn't align clearly with either the right or the left in American politics.

democrat, republican and green are parties, not right and left, which represent an arbitrary dichotomization of a complex landscape otherwise irreducible without losing critical information. that kind of reductionism, i daresay, never leads to meaningful understanding, just loggerheads.

the economist takes a conventional stance of promoting policies that favor the already wealthy. that facet of it is rather banal and certainly not where the exciting ideas for the next millennia are going to emerge from.

It’s good point: right and left aren’t parties. Unfortunately it’s increasingly feeling that way in America; Independents (among which I count myself) don’t play a meaningful role and polarization as measured by congressional voting patterns seems to be the highest it’s been in decades.

I think it’s unfair to say they support policies that favor the already wealthy. Certainly they do sometimes, but they’ve opposed tax cuts, supported minimum wage increases, etc. I’m ready to be proven wrong but I haven’t got that impression when I read it.

> "I think it’s unfair to say they support policies that favor the already wealthy."

it's not unfair to call a spade a spade. opposing tax cuts can be done for a myriad of supportive or unsupportive reasons, so that doesn't provide a useful counter-argument.

and "minimum wage increases" sounds great on the surface. but the underlying purpose of a minimum wage is to paper over gross systemic equities that have only grown over time and keep us from even discussing policies for creating more fair and dynamic markets that would naturally distribute wealth more widely and efficiently, and neatly obviate such a distortion-producing bandaid of a policy.

but the central point is that no significant party and nearly no politician is addressing systemic issues that has promoted winner-take-all dynamics in our politicoeconomy for at least the last 50 years. even obamacare was so browbeaten and laden with special interest provisions, our healthcare costs have only soared, all to append zeroes onto bank accounts that abosolutely don't need, and more pointedly don't deserve, them.

> and "minimum wage increases" sounds great on the surface. but the underlying purpose of a minimum wage is to paper over gross systemic equities that have only grown over time and keep us from even discussing policies for creating more fair and dynamic markets that would naturally distribute wealth more widely and efficiently, and neatly obviate such a distortion-producing bandaid of a policy.

This is a made up problem that came from economists high on their own models. Empirical evidence shows that minimum wage increases in the US have almost none of the distorting effects they would supposedly have. The response from economists has been to make up new models that show it's okay actually, up to ~60% of median wage.

Some countries like the Nordics have high incomes despite no minimum wage (they have sectoral bargaining unions instead) but they should probably get one since it increases productivity a little. And Australia's federal minimum wage is still higher than any locality in the US and yet causes no problems.

> Empirical evidence shows

I imagine there is 'evidence' out there but the empirical claim is quite intriguing. Do you have any sources for this?

Some literature review here:

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-15-minimum-wage-is-pre...

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-minimum-wage-pushback

One thing that might disappoint people is that increasing minimum wage isn't the best way to reduce poverty in the US, for the simple reason that most poor people aren't wage laborers. And not unemployed either - they're children and the elderly. Child allowances seem like they'll be very effective here, unless you don't trust their parents to use it well.

Around these parts, you have to be yelling and calling people names to be considered "partisan." Subtlety is lost on us.

(Not /s, but also not not /s?)

It's more than just being upfront about their bias. It's also the way they avoid descending into demonizing and name-calling. Even when discussing leaders of whom they clearly disapprove such as Recep Erdogan, Jair Bolsonaro, and Donald Trump, they don't come right out and declare them as "lunatics". Instead, they try to write dispassionate analysis which often drives readers to the conclusion that they are lunatics. This might seem a subtle distinction, but it is a marked departure from the shrill tone of many other media outfits.

The UK has outrageously partisan newspapers and always has, the Economist is one of the few publications that looks vaguely non-partisan (and as pointed out by others, it's more about being up-front in its classical liberal position). TV news is far more even, by law (but I think that's about to change, sadly).

The Economist certainly has an ideological bias.

However, unlike many publications, they are fairly forthcoming about it, and are clear about their position.

I don't agree with all of their positions (though I agree with most), but I most of all appreciate that they don't really try to bury opinion into "objective" reporting.

To add to this, I find that they are quite ready to examine the challenges to their position and are willing to give other viewpoints credit, especially in their observations. Empathizing with another side's point of view even if you don't agree with their approach is the first step to finding common ground, and I enjoy that they consistently exhibit this in their editorials.

The economist is ‘biased’. It was actually founded to campaign against the UK’s Corn Laws in 1843.

However although it has kept the same free trade agenda it is refreshingly open minded and is not tied to dogma, or political parties.

Are you American? US news is actually pretty good; the NYTimes is full of bad articles but it's still a world-class newspaper.

Meanwhile, UK and Australian media are awful, full of Murdoch sockpuppet papers that constantly lie about everything in order to get you to hate immigrants and vote Tory/Liberal. WSJ is a Murdoch paper but they have to sell to bankers, who at least professionally need to know the truth, which is why only the opinion section is nuts. UK papers are like the New York Post if it had less than no ethics.

I believe media de-regulation exacerbated the effect.

On a more philosophical level one might say that all media is biased - and that those who nakedly display their subjectivity are easier to parse using critical analysis than those who mask it through centrist positioning in an ideological spectrum.

The economist is very heavily biased towards global capitalism, and they present many strong cases in favour of particular political paths. I’m not sure why so many of their readers see them as neutral, I suspect it’s due to the high brow nature of the writing.

At the end of the day there is no way to produce a non-biased publication, you’re buying into the stories the publishers choose to publish (fact based or not), your opinion is likely formed before you read the magazine.

There's an excellent book about The Economist called "Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist." Here's a good review:

https://newrepublic.com/article/155962/liberalism-at-large-b...

I've heard it described as "Fleet Street cocktail party", for anticipating where topics will land across insightful-to-clueless.

You can also read The Economist as a report for middle class and above capitalists with disposal income to track where world events and trends are going in order to make good investments and business decisions. At the end of the newspaper is the stocks and stats, but the whole thing is a report.

The Economist is extremely moralizing. It represents the point of view of a city dweller with a high paying job who buys into liberal sensibilities but smugly thinks himself wiser and more prudent than the radicals on the streets. He is a modern day Girondist, at times alarmed to find his kind under the guillotine (we are on the same side! he might protest) but finding comfort in a magazine that reminds him he is part of the moral and economic elite who really know how to run things.

The political viewpoint of The Economist has shifted. Twelve years ago it was right-liberal, today it is left-liberal, but that is only because the above character has shifted in his views.

Yeah my college MBA bro roommate for some reason got a subscription he never read (circa 2006). I'd occasionally read it and almost completely rejected its politics at the time.

I got my own subscription a few years ago and now regularly read it. Most of its politics now line up with my own. I'm sure I've changed some, but the paper definitely has changed as well.

> The political viewpoint of The Economist has shifted. Twelve years ago it was right-liberal, today it is left-liberal, but that is only because the above character has shifted in his views.

True. I dare say that during the pandemic, policy articles have shifted towards Keynesian economics which is a huge U-turn from 00's and early 00's. On the other hand, the CEO changed in 2019, maybe that has something to do with it.

Lately reasoned debate has become very difficult on account of identity politics and social justice. It's as if the concept of debate is biased against them so they refuse to play the game. And they believe all disagreement with them to be illegitimate.

It still has a slant to its reporting, though. It's very neoliberal and almost always calls for deregulation, free markets, free trade, and globalization.

It's pretty factual if you ignore that slant though.

I can only speculate they must've concluded that their bottom line is better served by cheerleading 45% of the population than constantly disappointing 90% of the population. TL;DR; it's more profitable.

Also, lack of regulation. In the US you are a news organization if you say that you are news organization. Just like, at least colloquially, you are a professor if you teach a class at collage level. There is no body, or authority to set standards, expectations, and to confer those titles after a vigorous process.

Well, The Atlantic used to be pretty balanced, but since Mrs Jobs took over they've veered to the left too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com