Hacker News Reader

Comment by tacker2000 | Hacker News Reader

tacker2000

I read the Financial Times and The Economist. I think they are pretty well researched without leaning in a specific direction too much. The comments on FT are also mostly very civil, with good discussion.

The Guardian is “intelligent” but is way too blatantly leftist, to get any sort of balanced information.

View on HN

This, the financial focused papers have to at least be somewhat honest in their reporting as investors and other business folks depend on their reporting. Vs advocacy of whichever social/political/etc issue is currently in vogue.

How do you explain the popularity among that crowd of the Wall Street Journal?

The Wall Street Journal _used_ to be a good financial reporting paper. The editorial page has always been hard-right (varying between mercantilism to straight-up fascism depending on the era) but the general reporting was solid and you could depend on it to tell you the truth with as little spin as possible. This was very important when it was the primary source of business and financial news in the US. By the time Murdoch bought it things had started to slip a little because Bloomberg had eaten a large chunk of the 'deliver fact-based news I can use to make trading decisions' mandate and as you would expect, everything Murdoch touches turns to shit. The current WSJ is now basically a print version of Fox Business News and will never regain the trust and reputation it once commanded.

> The current WSJ is now basically a print version of Fox Business News and will never regain the trust and reputation it once commanded.

You and I are the only people I know who think that. Everyone else I know treats the WSJ just like they did pre-Murdoch.

The WSJ news section is generally described as center-right, and the editorial pages as hard-right

Hard-right implies nationalism or even fascism.

I think you mean conservative. I think it's important to be able to articulate the ideas of those we disagree with. One can be supportive of right-wing economic ideas and socially conservative positions without being hard-right. I say this as a moderate reader of the WSJ, and not a Republican.

The silo-ing of ideas leads to alienation among people and preconceptions of what the other people believe and who they are. That's tearing the country apart.

The WSJ advocated nationalism and was a fellow traveller with fascists during the Trump administration. The WSJ editorial page definitely includes substantional hard right content.

> The silo-ing of ideas leads to alienation among people and preconceptions of what the other people believe and who they are.

The WSJ is the most siloed of the major publications. I challenge you to find anything supporting a Democratic or liberal position. As I wrote in another comment, I once collected about two weeks of opinion articles, which IIRC was abouyt 200 of them. As I recall, only one included (not advocated) any support of a Democratic position, only three included any support of liberal positions.

The NY Times covers the political spectrum, from Ross Douthat to Bret Stephens (former WSJ opinion page editor) to David Brooks, etc.

> I challenge you to find anything supporting a Democratic or liberal position.

Three weeks ago the editorial section ran a piece by Joe Biden: https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-plan-for-fighting-inflation-...

Interesting, but it's a piece by the POTUS, so we might call that an exception.

That's an un-nuanced take. The NYT or WP Editorials aren't? I will say things have improved but look at the headlines throughout 2020 and 2021, at least on U.S. social topics, of the NYT. The editorial page spilled outside of the opinion section. Almost every article about any topic, from domestic policies to art to education or health, was about an identity issue. BTW, Brett Stephens almost got booted, as the staff revolted, if you recall.

However I'm not going to defend the WSJ - I'm only going to point out that you're overlaying your own political litmus tests and establishing a spectrum that reasonable people can disagree with. It doesn't matter if you polled 200 articles, because your criteria are debatable (along with Trump = fascism, and I loathe Trump).

Fascism is something you could define objectively with agreed definitions with a historical context: there are philosophical underpinnings and political programs. Fascism as a label is not subject to arbitrary definitions outside of student activist circles.

These claims about the NYT are popular on the right, but can you substantiate them? Otherwise, it's just like the opinion pieces everywhere.

> The NYT or WP Editorials aren't?

I don't know about the WP, but I gave plenty of examples of the ideological spread of the NYT opinion pages.

> t doesn't matter if you polled 200 articles, because your criteria are debatable

OK, debate them! I think they are rather objective and uncontroversial.

The WSJ is published by the same organization as Fox News.

Seconding the Economist. When I read it, I find I can stay in the loop without having to follow the news daily. A weekly high level summary is good enough for me.

Second both FT and The Economist. You can get by just with the Economist if you are happy with it being a weekly.

Both FT and Economist are very good at not including any fluff, in the language they use and in the content itself.

the FT has probably the best info:word count ratio of any daily publication i’ve ever read

Everything is biased. I quite like The Economist but it's liberal, "markets first", stance is just as much an ideology as anything The Guardian espouses. Its trick is to make itself seem above the fray, offering a god's eye dispassionate opinion. It is clever marketing and presentation.

I rate it for world affairs and it is a good news source. I just think it gets undue levels of praise.

It's comical to call the Economist unbiased. They make their bias very very clear.

I think a better way to put it is that The Economist has a bias unique to itself. They typically publish articles which are consistent with their own particular editorial voice rather than remaining properly dispassionate.

Really, the big difference between The Economist and other popular "biased" publications is that The Economist has avoided becoming a party mouthpiece. Yes, it's certainly a political publication, but they arrive at that position without having fallen prey to the usual motivated reasoning. I credit this unusual distinction to the international nature of their operation and the focusing effect granted by virtue of hanging everything on a single overarching topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com