
What The Economist doesn't tell you - kristianc
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-the-economist-doesnt-tell-you-liberal-democracy-populism-review
======
Angostura
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.

~~~
gatestone
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/](https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/)

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

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pjc50
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.

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conjectures
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'.

~~~
Etheryte
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.

~~~
lorenzhs
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.

~~~
fsloth
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.

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q-base
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.

~~~
slavik81
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."

~~~
q-base
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!

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leto_ii
> 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.

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

~~~
leto_ii
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-...](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/142875/what-does-to-correct-
for-the-fact-that-mean-is-the-verb-correct-intransitiv) ).

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.

------
growlist
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.

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

~~~
kristianc
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2003/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2003/02/20/why-
war-would-be-justified)

[https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/07/17/the-case-for-
wa...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/07/17/the-case-for-war-
revisited)

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kyuudou
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.

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ekianjo
> 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.

~~~
pjc50
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.

------
LordN00b
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.

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sunstone
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.

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flicken
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...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52105758-liberalism-at-large) ).

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

~~~
pjc50
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.

~~~
dagw
_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.

