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It also has an agenda (basically, globalist, pro-EU etc) which is easy to miss if you are overly-impressed by the intellectual veneer. That said, my favourite E
by alpine 14y ago
It also has an agenda (basically, globalist, pro-EU etc) which is easy to miss if you are overly-impressed by the intellectual veneer. That said, my favourite Economist contribution to the world of letters is the Big Mac index, which is rather clever.
- Spooky23 14y agoI don't know about that, the biased stuff is pretty obvious. For example, they ran a cover article a few months back about the poor helpless souls in the City of London and how the big bad bankers from other places were challenging them. I found myself laughing at one point. They are the best source of international news. My biggest issue with it is that reading it is time-consuming, and the weekly cadence is relentless.
- alpine 14y agoI'm not really talking about the 'biased' stuff - they take anonymous contributions from all kinds of people so there are bound to be articles that one considers biased, simply because of this. What I'm referring to is a subtle pro-globalist agenda which contributors from all political backgrounds can unite around. The archetypical UK example is the pro-EU Conservative/mainstream Lib Dem/New Labour group that considers national politics to be a parochial irrelevance to be replaced by supranational institutions. The embodiment of this group is probably (now Lord) Peter Mandleson.
- Gmo 14y agoOn the other hand, for mainland EU reader, it has a very liberal ("british") bias :) So I guess the truth is in the middle.
- mickeyp 14y agoThey don't take anonymous outside contributions, as least, not without putting their name in the byline (rendering the anonymous bit incorrect); they do publish their articles under pseudonyms -- like Babbage, Bagehot, etc. -- or initials only, as they feel the article and author represent the entire magazine and not just the views of the journalist who wrote the piece.
- vosper 14y agoI've never thought their agenda was subtle, or that they make any attempt to conceal it - The Economist is full of statements like "this magazine has long argued for" or "this would be a mistake" when referring to a policy or idea. You might not agree with their viewpoint but they don't hide it.
- arjunnarayan 14y agoIt's the british journalistic tradition: every magazine or newspaper openly establishes the fact that it has certain assumptions, and then argues from there. There is no "unbiased" source when it comes to politics/economics. You'll notice that the pure empiricists do not have opinions on macroeconomics. It's only in America that certain news organizations pretend to be unbiased arbiters.
- _delirium 14y ago> It's only in America that certain news organizations pretend to be unbiased arbiters. I don't think that's only an American phenomenon. For example, Germany's Der Spiegel is somewhat famous for projecting a neutral/serious/nonpartisan image (though it also gets criticized for that).
- yk 14y agoDer Spiegel is also a magazine which is famous for a rather strong shift in their agenda. ( And a somewhat good example for the dangers of not declaring a policy viewpoint of a news source. ) [Edit]Typo
- Thrymr 14y agoYes, but the situation is reversed in television/radio news: the BBC is a pillar of objectivity, and the US market is dominated by cable news talking heads yelling at each other.
- baq 14y agohardly. al jazeera tries to be objective, a lot of people from bbc work there now.
- propercoil 14y agoyep agenda is obvious like you said globalist and banksters pro