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Is The Economist left- or right-wing?

ycombonator 7y ago
If you read all their articles for the past 10 years they are clearly a pro-globalism left leaning entity
- beatgammit 7y ago
  I subscribed because I thought they were unbiased, I stopped when I realized they're still biased and I wasn't reading them as much as I thought I would. I now subscribe to a much more biased news source that's mostly opposite from the other biased news I read periodically. I know this source is biased, so I can at least account for that, and I enjoy the articles a bit more since they're not afraid of showing their true colors. I'm considering subscribing to a local news organisation that also challenges the status quo (it's also quite biased, but as least it supports the minority view).
rvz 7y ago
> Neither. We consider ourselves to be in the "radical centre" From [1]: 'According to the 2014 Pew Research Study, Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum, the majority of The Economist readers hold political values to the left-of-center. Seventeen percent of The Economist's audience is conservative (compared with 26% of all respondents to the survey).' Interestingly, I've seen far worse online and printed 'news' which have an unashamedly leaned bias when they do their reporting. But looking at content from FT.com and The Economist, they show that they have highly factual content in their business section at least and both seem to be graded as 'least biased' with high evidence based reporting [0][1]. I'd pretty much rather subscribe to such content than to read clearly biased free online 'opinionated' news junk littered with ads on my browser. [0] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-economist/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-economist/ [1] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist
- FearNotDaniel 7y ago
  Note: the Pew survey was US readers only. I suppose ideas that Europe may consider centre-right, such as "free market capitalism is great as long as it has a modicum of government regulation and a functioning social welfare system" are viewed as dangerously radical across the pond.
JohnClark1337 7y ago
It's like having a security team perform an audit of their own security practices, and coming up with the conclusion that they are "100% secure".
IXxXI 7y ago
The Economist is owned and financed by banking cartels. That means they're on the left.
sunstone 7y ago
I've been reading it a few decades. I would say it's socially liberal and financially conservative on balance. More than once I've seen two articles arguing opposite sides of the same topic in the same physical magazine. So they're not afraid of opposing views when things are not clear. Right now, what The Economist hasn't twigged to yet is that Trump's specific task for Putin is to mess up the US-EU relationship as much as humanly possible.

If you read all their articles for the past 10 years they are clearly a pro-globalism left leaning entity

beatgammit 7y ago
I subscribed because I thought they were unbiased, I stopped when I realized they're still biased and I wasn't reading them as much as I thought I would. I now subscribe to a much more biased news source that's mostly opposite from the other biased news I read periodically. I know this source is biased, so I can at least account for that, and I enjoy the articles a bit more since they're not afraid of showing their true colors. I'm considering subscribing to a local news organisation that also challenges the status quo (it's also quite biased, but as least it supports the minority view).

rvz 7y ago

> Neither. We consider ourselves to be in the "radical centre" From [1]: 'According to the 2014 Pew Research Study, Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum, the majority of The Economist readers hold political values to the left-of-center. Seventeen percent of The Economist's audience is conservative (compared with 26% of all respondents to the survey).' Interestingly, I've seen far worse online and printed 'news' which have an unashamedly leaned bias when they do their reporting. But looking at content from FT.com and The Economist, they show that they have highly factual content in their business section at least and both seem to be graded as 'least biased' with high evidence based reporting [0][1]. I'd pretty much rather subscribe to such content than to read clearly biased free online 'opinionated' news junk littered with ads on my browser. [0] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-economist/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-economist/ [1] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist https://www.allsides.com/news-source/economist

FearNotDaniel 7y ago
Note: the Pew survey was US readers only. I suppose ideas that Europe may consider centre-right, such as "free market capitalism is great as long as it has a modicum of government regulation and a functioning social welfare system" are viewed as dangerously radical across the pond.

JohnClark1337 7y ago

It's like having a security team perform an audit of their own security practices, and coming up with the conclusion that they are "100% secure".

IXxXI 7y ago

The Economist is owned and financed by banking cartels. That means they're on the left.

sunstone 7y ago

I've been reading it a few decades. I would say it's socially liberal and financially conservative on balance. More than once I've seen two articles arguing opposite sides of the same topic in the same physical magazine. So they're not afraid of opposing views when things are not clear. Right now, what The Economist hasn't twigged to yet is that Trump's specific task for Putin is to mess up the US-EU relationship as much as humanly possible.