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Comment by ROTMetro | Hacker News Reader

I used to find the Economist great, but with the corrosiveness of everything this last bit, they seem to sneak agenda into articles now days in a way I feel like this whole post is trying to move away from. Maybe as a lost Libertarian who can't stand the control everyone's lives progressives I feel that has crept quite a bit into the Economist. It's funny it bothers me as I have reached a point where I feel Libertarianism just isn't compatible with the realities of the modern world as much as this child of hippies wishes it was and am looking for new understanding, but I always leave the Economist feeling like their American reporting on subjects I'm informed on is very manipulating which then makes me doubt their reporting on subjects I don't have enough context for deep personal understanding.

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I haven't noticed this kind of bias in the US reporting, but my personal views skew moderate liberal so it might be hitting a personal blindspot.

The main stances that seem to go against coastal US media I've seen are:

1) Trans rights, particularly with youth transitioning. The Economist seems to have an article every week or two talking about health implications, controversy in female sports, or detransitioning.

2) Free speech. The Economist is very critical of any perceived censorship, and will frequently cover perceived excesses from the left in the US, particularly in higher education.

Generally I do not think the Economist does a great job of visually separating their editorial content from their news content. In many cases visual treatment of a column looks very close to a regular article, and the editorials at the front of each issue look (at a glance) indistinguishable from news stories. Each issue will also have a larger "briefing" on a prominent world issue that definitely blurs the lines between news and opinion. As a reader of many years, I've taken to skipping the editorial content, skimming the briefings, and taking the columns case-by-case. But I can imagine occasional readers having a different experience than I do.

Did you try the financial times? I sometimes find them shockingly unbiased.

In college we were required to get a subscription to FT and I found it quite liberal. As was the professor who required the subscription.

Hmmm ... they are certainly right of center afaict. If they are quite liberal, what do you call the vast landscape to the left of them? Who is a centrist?

This may be a case where the word “liberal” means something different in the US than the rest of the English speaking world.

I agree. The Economist is like NPR for rich people and diplomats. Head out to the parlor with your cigar and jacket and enjoy it.

They are good in that they are informative and not subtle about the voice of the paper. But it gets a little boring to me if I read it for a few months.

What is NPR? I only found Nevada Public Radio.

National Public Radio.

> I have reached a point where I feel Libertarianism just isn't compatible with the realities of the modern world as much as this child of hippies wishes it was

You may have interest in the writings of the Niskanen Center https://www.niskanencenter.org/ They work from a similar position. For example, I was hugely impressed by this essay https://www.niskanencenter.org/what-the-pandemic-revealed/

I don't know a regular publication devoted to this view, unfortunately.

How did you find them? Do you know who reads them or where they are popular? I came across them recently and was both impressed and puzzled that I'd never heard of them and never head anyone discuss them.

I haven't read that particular essay, but maybe submit it?

I can't remember, unfortunately. Possibly it was forwarded by a friend? Or it showed up in some feed or another.

Reason magazine is in broadly the same territory.

The Economist is clearly not a Libertarian newspaper. They represent the classical liberal position, which is not Libertarian, and never has been.

I have no idea what you are talking about. There is not a definitive / clear line between classical liberal and libertarian. The comment seems to be unnecessarily divisive and seeking for flame war.

I'm puzzled by that reaction. In my head at least, the distinction is pretty deep, and describing The Economist as "libertarian" in any sense would be clearly misplaced, other than to say it sometimes supports positions libertarians also agree with.

Historically, when The Economist was founded, libertarianism would have been associated with French anarchism. The core, consistent theme of libertarianism is that individual rights trump arbitrary interference by a collective. The various forms of anarchism are sort of natural "extreme" forms of libertarianism. Intellectually, libertarianism starts with a negative claim that except in extraordinary cases, the collective has no right to interfere with individuals. This remains true today. Core items (legalization of prostitution, drugs, elimination of many taxes) begin with the pretext that the collective has no right to regulate individual behavior in these domains.

Classical liberalism emerged in Britain (Locke, Smith, Mill, etc.). It has roots in a blend of English utilitarianism and enlightenment-era attempt to root the form of government in reason. "Rights" in classical liberalism are important, but they aren't necessarily more foundational than well-being. Anarchism is seem as trivially untenable (Hobbes' "nature red of tooth and claw"). Liberalism tries to identify a core set of functions (security, laws and their enforcement, public infrastructure) and a set of mechanisms (constitutions, elections, courts, etc.) to implement them, and has a very enlightenment-era emphasis on building institutions that are robust to "bad" actors. It does cleave towards a minimalist view of government, and does elevate rights like freedom of speech, but these are seen as intrinsically grey and are framed much more in terms of limiting the power of government institutions to ensure that they remain true to their mission/function.

I don't think that's flame bait, or super controversial.

Do the words mean something else to you?

I'm not the person you answered but I find your comment well put. Do you have further reading on this distinction?

This is all true, but in 20th century America the term libertarian got re-applied to a right-wing, small or no government, free-market approach. Now days most Americans are completely unaware of the French anarchist usage of the word. The origins of this are mixed, but I think it's safe to say the Hayek/Friedman wing has roots in classical liberalism, for example Locke's theory of private property.

If you read your own words carefully, you will agree with me: There is not a definitive / clear line between classical liberal and libertarian. The core values are the same. The historical context of French anarchism has nothing to do with the common use of the term libertarian in the modern (American) context.

Your own words "They represent the classical liberal position, which is not Libertarian, and never has been" make it seems like there is a clear cut difference between classical liberal and (modern) libertarian. Which is simply not true and unnecessarily divisive and seeking for flame war.

It is the mainstream view that classical liberal and libertarian are mostly equivalent in the modern context. The clear cut differentiation between classical liberal and libertarian is your own personal opinion. It is ok to have your own personal opinion, but it is exaggeration to state it as if it is the objective fact.

Your two positions are really not far apart from a third party perspective, but throwing in claims like "unnecessarily divisive and seeking for flame war" just seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To be clear, I was not the person you were responding to, simply someone describing a relatively old set of philosophies.

We're talking about the classification of a 170-year-old journal that operates out of the UK. I don't think the suggestion that libertarianism (particularly American libertarianism) is largely irrelevant when discussing The Economist is surprising, or shocking, or even terribly controversial. The suggestion that it would start a flame war is particularly odd as far as the content of the suggestion was concerned, although the tone of the comment you were responding to was a little blustery.

I'm sure a lot of the staff of The Economist and a lot of libertarians hold, say, Milton Friedman in high regard.

The clear cut distinction between classical liberalism and libertarianism, however, is not merely my own personal opinion. Although the intellectual landscape is complex and variegated, there's a fundamental difference in how the two lines of thinking argue, and what they accept as first principals. Classical liberalism is an institutionalist view that derives policy decisions using a utilitarian set of values that balances rights against other measures of well-being and sustainability.

Libertarianism, conversely, uses a first-principals rights-based way of approaching decisions. Just as an example, here's the front page of the Libertarian Party in the United States:

"<The Libertarian Party> is the only political party that respects you as a unique and responsible individual. Our slogan is that we are 'The Party of Principle' because we stand firmly on our principles. Libertarians strongly oppose any government interference in your personal, family, and business decisions. Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another."

This is pretty close to antithetical to classical liberalism. Classical liberalism explicitly seeks to suborn individual rights (which are not enshrined as intrinsically valuable) in a way that doesn't make us worse off than we started. The minimalism is classical liberalism is about outcomes, not about rights.

Obviously that's just a cheap banner page and not representative of libertarianism to everyone. I was surprised to find that it was closer to the original French meaning than I expected (which isn't important, but might be interesting).

Thank you, jknoepfler, this is essentially what I was thinking. The Economist is quite supportive of institutions and their value, in a way that American Libertarians are not. While both groups have important and useful things to say, and they sometimes share or advocate for the same positions, it is important to understand their differences too.

'Libertarianism' in the USA,2021 means something quite different than the term as it applies in a historical, academic context.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_in_the_United_S...

As Lenin put it, "a journal which speaks for British millionaires".

"the classical liberal position, which is not Libertarian, and never has been."

? The 'classical liberal' position is literally the foundation of 'Libertarianism', which is a specifically modern American concept.

> The 'classical liberal' position is literally the foundation of 'Libertarianism', which is a specifically modern American concept.

Those two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

I subscribe to the Economist too and perceive their reporting as still being reasonably libertarian without venturing into tinfoil-hat territory, but being in the UK I guess I get both a different balance of articles and also have a different perception of libertarianism.

The Economist, like NPR, are good at sounding informed and unbiased, but wind up to be egregiously ideologically compromised

Can you give some examples?

Particularly with NPR, you have to focus on particular shows and stations. There's no central editorial staff for the content that comes from their member stations. For example the Takeaway has quite different editorial standards than All Things Considered or Morning Edition.

For the “network” content, NPR has good reporting but hammers topics again and again and again and again.

The selection of stories tells the tale. Whenever the topic de jour hits, you’ll get a good 7-10 minutes of patter about it every hour for a month.

I’m all for it, and don’t consider them “compromised”, but there’s typically not enough content to support that level of coverage.

Can you give an example of what you mean by that?

With the Economist - their support of the Iraq war.

If something has elite consensus they will usually support it. This is probably the last place where youd want an ideological blind spot to be, also.

Do you have an article in mind?

NPR has a subtle, but fairly clear centre left bias.

"There's no central editorial staff" - there's no need to have a central staff if you hire the same types of people.

Hear it from former senior NPR Exec. himself [1]

I'm not supporting this man's views at all, other than to point out he gives a fairly clear articulation into how 'bias' doesn't remotely need to have some kind of central authority and that it absolutely exists at NPR.

In fact, for someone who doesn't see the bias in something like NPR, learning to see the bias in an otherwise fairly respectable institution which does have fairly high standards and isn't so interest in flame-bait such as NPR - would be a worthy exercise.

'Culture' is probably the root of all bias in most places, not some 'central committee'. People who don't fit the mood are pushed said, those who have 'the correct opinions' are promoted. It's a perennial feature of human organisations you can see this in corporate culture as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0qyeFVf7bg&ab_channel=TheRu...

I never said whether I agree or disagree that bias exists or where it was, bias exists in all human institutions. Part of modern, respectable journalism is the active task of acknowledging it, even.

What I asked were for some concrete examples. Whenever the discussion comes up on bias at NPR (in particular) people tend to hand wave around "subtle, but fairly clear centre left bias."

In my opinion there is a bias, which I would call "radical centrism" (the Sisyphean task of trying to recognize bias and attempt to curtail it), and I could point to few in the past week as a regular listener, but whenever I hear "NPR has a liberal bias" I can't get anyone to give me concrete examples. It's taken as fact.

My overwhelming interpretation of the national NPR broadcasts are two part :

Firstly, the majority of it are human interest stories. They do not devote a majority of their air time to politics. I don't see how the Moth, Fresh Air, This American Life, or the handful of local shows I listen to regularly about local news stories trends anywhere but whichever direction is compelling to a listener.

And secondly, an opinion that I don't like articulating on HN or anywhere that might ruffle feathers is that facts have a liberal bias. You can argue until the cows come up about the role of government in society, but the cardinal direction of "reality" on the political compass is <- that way.

There's a game that's fun to play to see how sometimes ideological and vacuous the Economist can be - try and swap out the key operative term of a piece with something absurd and see if the force of the argument changes or remains persuasive.

This is a while back, and an extreme example, but the pinnacle for me was the editorial (https://postimg.cc/hhkmfgN3) on the 9th of January 2012 where one could swap every reference it had on defending banks and financiers with references to slavery and slaveholders and the force of the argument would not change one jot. This was because it made absolutely no recourse to the wider context of impacts that the industry might have besides being of benefit to a city. It was just a whirr of rhetoric and really opened my eyes to the biases in play. The magazine's prestige has never quite recovered.

Fun aside, many other cases of journalistic bias are more about very selective reporting and emphasis, see for example the Bolivian election of 2020.

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