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Comment by tene80i | Hacker News Reader

Why is it funny? You think British media can’t be critical of the British government? They are famously merciless.

Also, the economist is majority foreign owned, so try doing more than 1 second of research, or be more civil, or ideally both.

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The Economist is very much part of the establishment, whoever they are owned by. It is not surprising that they would want to play down any idea that the UK is less “democratic”. Furthermore, The Economist is one of the main mouthpieces of British capitalism, and so their definition of “democracy” is going to be very much of the liberal, capital-friendly kind, which is not completely incompatible with some authoritarian tendencies.

The ranking isn’t published by the newspaper - it’s by the research and insights B2B company of the overall group. Regardless of what assumptions you have about the newspaper (elite, yes, but I’m unclear on why you think fierce liberalism is likely to mean they don’t really value democracy), the B2B unit sells data - they’re as likely to skew this ranking as they are at which countries are better at rail infrastructure. Perhaps their definition of democracy is indeed flawed though - no need to speculate, go read their methodology.

To be fair, BBC has hardly been that critical in the British governments' complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

And their headlines covering Israeli atrocities (not even their own governments), is super passive.

But the parent point was that no British media could be critical of government policy. Picking an example that isn’t, on one area, doesn’t prove their point.

[Edit] Granted though, the bbc isn’t merciless - that’s more the newspapers

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