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I'm curious, can you cite some examples? In my experience The Economist has a definite bias toward "market reforms" (which some people might instead describe as

I'm curious, can you cite some examples? In my experience The Economist has a definite bias toward "market reforms" (which some people might instead describe as "gutting the state" or something), but "trivially false" seems a lot more extreme.

blululu 6y ago
I realize that this ask is standard on HN but it’s a bit of a pain to comb through a publication to produce the imputed litany of minor inaccuracies. I share the OP’s sentiment that the economist is a lousy source for opinions (it is however great for total coverage of world events, but you take this with an ideological spin that free trade and deregulation will make everything good). In general the economist is written as a series of anonymous op-eds. Articles will bring up specious comparisons ‘the amount of natural gas reserves in Bolivia is greater than the oil sands of Alberta’ and use these to support opinions that are unrelated. They will make bold forecasts from scanty data ‘more subsidies for domestic industry will reduce GDP growth’, ‘restricting access to Qualcomm chips will cripple Chinese Mobile Manufacturers’ and never validate their success rate. In general it requires a lot of critical reading to not get sucked into believing that they know what they’re talking about.
- astrange 6y ago
  > They will make bold forecasts from scanty data ‘more subsidies for domestic industry will reduce GDP growth’, ‘restricting access to Qualcomm chips will cripple Chinese Mobile Manufacturers’ and never validate their success rate. In general it requires a lot of critical reading to not get sucked into believing that they know what they’re talking about. The Economist actually interestingly runs a forecasting competition that does just that. I expect you have to pay more for those intelligence reports. https://www.gjopen.com/challenges https://www.gjopen.com/challenges
libraryatnight 6y ago
They won't be able to supply any examples beyond the opinion pieces, which are like most opinion pieces in all publications: click bait OPINIONS. The Economist does a decent job of reporting when reporting.

blululu 6y ago

I realize that this ask is standard on HN but it’s a bit of a pain to comb through a publication to produce the imputed litany of minor inaccuracies. I share the OP’s sentiment that the economist is a lousy source for opinions (it is however great for total coverage of world events, but you take this with an ideological spin that free trade and deregulation will make everything good). In general the economist is written as a series of anonymous op-eds. Articles will bring up specious comparisons ‘the amount of natural gas reserves in Bolivia is greater than the oil sands of Alberta’ and use these to support opinions that are unrelated. They will make bold forecasts from scanty data ‘more subsidies for domestic industry will reduce GDP growth’, ‘restricting access to Qualcomm chips will cripple Chinese Mobile Manufacturers’ and never validate their success rate. In general it requires a lot of critical reading to not get sucked into believing that they know what they’re talking about.

astrange 6y ago
> They will make bold forecasts from scanty data ‘more subsidies for domestic industry will reduce GDP growth’, ‘restricting access to Qualcomm chips will cripple Chinese Mobile Manufacturers’ and never validate their success rate. In general it requires a lot of critical reading to not get sucked into believing that they know what they’re talking about. The Economist actually interestingly runs a forecasting competition that does just that. I expect you have to pay more for those intelligence reports. https://www.gjopen.com/challenges https://www.gjopen.com/challenges

libraryatnight 6y ago

They won't be able to supply any examples beyond the opinion pieces, which are like most opinion pieces in all publications: click bait OPINIONS. The Economist does a decent job of reporting when reporting.