The Economist

I'm always a bit surprised by the depth of anti-Economist sentiment lurking out there in certain corners. I wouldn't (and don't) rely on it as my go-to source of information about what's happening on the issues I care most about, but when looking for something to read on a plane or train ride or whatever it's a decent choice. Think of it this way -- suppose you had a well-traveled, reasonably witty cousin who voyaged around the world with a good eye for detail and a personality marred by a strange obsession with labor market deregulation and pension privatization (or, as he calls it, "privatisation").

You'd be happy to grab a beer with him every few months when he's in town and hear the occasional wacky anecdote about monarchists in the Caribbean or African dictators railing against apprentice sorcerers. Sure, the fact that the entire "Europe" section could be replaced most weeks by LIBERALISE YOUR LABOUR MARKETS DAMNIT gets a bit annoying, but still you can make a kind of sport out of it. This article on economic problems in Poland, for example, argues that "the urgent need is to raise productivity by liberalising the labour market" in the third graf, whereas this article on economic problems in Spain doesn't fret about "Spain's lack of structural reforms to [...] free up the labour market" until the very last graf. Does that make the need more urgent in Poland or more emphatic in Spain? No other magazine gives you those kind of delights.

Plus, labor market liberalization (or sation) aside, you genuinely don't get insightful coverage of the ongoing war in Somalia and America's role in that mess in any other magazine I'm familiar with.

Comments

I read a similar sentiment on Brad DeLongs site. You both make the assessment, that although you do not trust the Economist on matters you know something about (European labour markets), but nevertheless you think they are most reliable source on matters you don't know anything about (Somalia). That's odd, isn't it?

Posted by jones | March 16, 2008 10:21 AM

I read a similar sentiment on Brad DeLongs site. You both make the assessment, that although you do not trust the Economist on matters you know something about (European labour markets), but nevertheless you think they are most reliable source on matters you don't know anything about (Somalia). That's odd, isn't it?

Posted by jones | March 16, 2008 10:23 AM

The Economist is a weird magazine. They were on the ball with regards to the housing and subprime situation long before everyone else. Except that just before things looked like they were about to crash, they backed off. They started acting like it wasn't going to be that bad after all. Even as it slowly dawned on everyone that it was going to be much worse than The Economist was ruminating in 2006.

Opinionated is useful if you have the right filters. But these days, that is what blogs are for. My wife gets (and reads the Economist) and I read the blogs. My information takes more work to filter signal-to-noise, but at the end of the day, but I feel the quality of information I get is better.

Posted by Walker | March 16, 2008 10:23 AM

I read a similar sentiment on Brad DeLongs site. You both make the assessment, that although you do not trust the Economist on matters you know something about (European labour markets), but nevertheless you think they are most reliable source on matters you don't know anything about (Somalia). That's odd, isn't it?

Posted by jones | March 16, 2008 10:24 AM

I read a similar sentiment on Brad DeLongs site. You both make the assessment, that although you do not trust the Economist on matters you know something about (European labour markets), but nevertheless you think they are most reliable source on matters you don't know anything about (Somalia). That's odd, isn't it?

Posted by jones | March 16, 2008 10:25 AM

Put me in the anti-Economist side. I used to actually subscribe, until, 1. They changed Lexington, and 2. They shamelessly defended Bush in everything and anything. (This was years ago.) Ideology masquerading as journalism, indeed.

Posted by John McCain: More of the Same | March 16, 2008 10:36 AM

You both make the assessment, that although you do not trust the Economist on matters you know something about (European labour markets), but nevertheless you think they are most reliable source on matters you don't know anything about (Somalia).

Clearly, to be safe, one should only trust information that one has experienced first hand. I personally refuse to believe such a place as Somalia exists at all, since I have never been there.

Posted by James Gary | March 16, 2008 10:40 AM

@jones: I rarely respond to opinions offered in quadruplicate, but here goes . . . The distinction between fact reporting and editorial stance is pretty well understood in political journalism. That the economist has a party line on what should be done with labor markets does not make them, in theory, less reliable as a source of routine facts about the world. So unless Matt's taking the Economist's advice on which side to support (or whatever) in the Somali conflict, I don't think your criticism has much merit.

Posted by southpaw | March 16, 2008 10:40 AM

Plus, labor market liberalization (or sation) aside, you genuinely don't get insightful coverage of the ongoing war in Somalia and America's role in that mess in any other magazine I'm familiar with.

Which probably means that you have no ability to judge whether or not you're getting genuinely insightful coverage of the same from The Economist. People have grown to distrust The Economist as they've come across bad articles on subjects with which they have some familiarity. It's the difference between "well-traveled, reasonably witty cousin...[with] a strange obsession with labor market deregulation and pension privatization" and "a well-traveled, witty cousin who is a blowhard who claims more than he knows, and who gets away with it because he is witty and has an English accent." Once you stop being sure of which your cousin is, you stop valuing his information so much.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 16, 2008 10:42 AM

Suppose you had a well-traveled, reasonably witty cousin who voyaged around the world with a good eye for detail and a personality marred by a strange obsession with labor market deregulation and pension privatization?

If he had an amusing British accent, I'd listen to him. But I'd never let my daughter marry one.

Posted by Voice of anti-Economist prejudice | March 16, 2008 10:43 AM

I think you're about right on this. The real value of the Economist is getting details on undercovered parts of the world rather than its US-Europe coverage. The inside-baseball on the UK can be illuminating, to the extent that one has the stomach for it.

The real measure of its utility comes into focus when one of the third-world situations Economist readers have been following for months/years (e.g., the Rwanda genocide, the Congolese civil war, East Timor, the Thailand coup) is picked up by the MSM. Invariably, the MSM coverage is shallow and/or distorted, and gives scant attention to the historical context. I won't pretend that the Economist has given me any deep understanding of these places, but I have rarely been taken completely by surprise at how events play out in these places.

Posted by David Yaseen | March 16, 2008 10:43 AM

I've read The Economist off and on for 30 plus years. It reminds me a little of the old Brfitish East India Company...a kind of private little domain populated by men who know a lot but display les wisdom than I'd like to see.

One of their covers sticks in my mind. It was an image of President Bill Clinton arround Lewinsky time. The larger than life caption read "Just Go"!

It was the one of shallowest most polemical bits of eassaying I've read.

Posted by jim | March 16, 2008 10:44 AM

In addition to the typical worry of "being often wrong on things I know about", the reason I had for stopping trusting The Economist on many issues was similar to that expressed by Walker. I read the magazine fairly regularly from early 2000 until mid 2001. Their news and financial coverage made it completely clear that the dot.com sector was a house of cards that was going to come down at any time. It was absolutely obvious to anyone who read it with the slightest care at all and knew the first thing about economics. But, despite this, they didn't explicitly say this, but rather the opposite, that maybe things had changed, that people shouldn't worry, that certainly no regulation was appropriate or that anyone should try to do anything to deflate the bubble slowly. No- that would be outrageous, and really, since there could not be a bubble anyway, given how smart markets are, we should just not worry about it. Again, this all to the clear contradiction of their actual news coverage. Strange and disturbing, I thought. It isn't a bad read on a plane, you can learn something from it, and the photo captions are often quite funny. But if you want good international news I suggest the Christian Science Monitor instead. There's certainly less chance it's lying to you for ideological reasons.

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | March 16, 2008 10:48 AM

I've long felt that The Economist was like a very charismatic cartoon dragon. It says to the American liberal, "No, no, conservatives in England don't eat people anymore, chap. Why don't you come help me clean this spinach from my teeth? That's a good boy."

That, and they have anti-union Tourette's, much like Larouchies have anti-British Tourette's.

Posted by Luke | March 16, 2008 10:51 AM

Welcome to my world. I have completely given up on ever being able to spell properly again.

Posted by KathyF | March 16, 2008 11:03 AM

I think Matt misses the point of the criticism he thinks is overblown. Matt, imagine if that cousin that you knew was witty but kind of kooky and reliably wrong on some important major issues had millions of followers, many of whom immediately adopted his views because doing so gave them a feeling of sophistication and worldliness.

Not so benign then, right?

Posted by But, um | March 16, 2008 11:04 AM

Your forgot to mention one thing--the fact that the Middle East and Africa section should be re-named "Depressed and Depressing."

This may very well be accurate, but it doesn't change the fact that every time I read that section, I feel a deep sense of helpless despair.

Posted by Chris Yeh | March 16, 2008 11:05 AM

"One of their covers sticks in my mind. It was an image of President Bill Clinton arround Lewinsky time. The larger than life caption read "Just Go"!"

I almost canceled my subscription after that cover.

Amazingly, given the disaster of a president we've had for the past 7 years, they have never published a similar cover about Bush.

I still read the Economist, but I have always read it with a filter, and I do think it has actually gotten worse in the past few years.

Posted by RWB | March 16, 2008 11:09 AM

I think it's interesting how this whole discussion takes it for granted that a liberalization bent is an inherently bad thing. Certainly being pro-liberalization can sometimes seem to blind the magazine to cases where regulation or caution is necessary, but that seems to be only half the complaint. I'm not convinced that being pro-"liberalisation" per se is a bad thing, where most of these critics seem to think so. I'd say it's not out of line to say that liberalization is necessary in much of Europe, or the world for that matter. Surely there are cases when this bias has led the paper to some unfortunate positions--supporting Bush being the most prominent example--but it also leads to some sensible recommendations. It's hard to disagree with the paper that the Democrats now running for president are overreaching reality to curry favor among downscale voters convinced that "globalization" stole their jobs.

The other thing is that it's odd that people seem to feel that they shouldn't read an opinionated magazine whose opinion they disagree with. Sometimes it's good for (American) liberals to pick up the National Review or Weekly Standard and realize that the other side isn't always wrong about everything.

So long as you never depend on The Economist (or any publication) as your sole source of knowledge on the world I think there's no reason not to read it. It's information density, breadth, and (usually) depth are completely (and sadly) unparalleled in the American weekly space.

Posted by david | March 16, 2008 11:11 AM

I think it's interesting how this whole discussion takes it for granted that a liberalization bent is an inherently bad thing.

Read more carefully. I'm not sure there's a consensus complaint, but if there is, that's not it.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 16, 2008 11:19 AM

Many, many years ago The Economist used to be a much better publication, perhaps the best general news magazine in the world.

Then too many other Americans discovered that fact and started reading it, and the circulation became heavily skewed toward the U.S. market. Since most of the American readers were people whose default view of the world was shaped by the WSJ, the NYT, and the WashPost, they were forced to heavily move in that same direction to avoid "reader backlash".

So they're now not very different from the DC/NYC WSJ/NYT/Post elite opinion spectrum, and their current writers are people roughly similar to your totally incompetent colleague McArdle, namely dim ideologish neocon-libertarians who never say anything insightful. Needless to say, I stopped reading them years ago, though I still nominally subscribe.

It's the old problem: when everyone starts hearing about a good club or whatever, too many of the wrong sort of people start coming, and the quality sinks. I think Grouch Marx had something to say about that.

Poor Norman Macrae must be turning over in his grave, except that I think he's still alive.

Posted by RKU | March 16, 2008 11:23 AM

It's not insightful the more you learn about the subject.

They take an overly forced editorial voice, to the point where it is unnecessary. When they try to start a fight with Berlusconi, it makes me disbelieve the gravity of Edward Lucas' claims against Medvedev.

The internet has screwed up their business. Before if the Economist had something to say about Pakistan, you were thankful for it. Now you can read Dawn and get a much better info. All you lose is the clever photo caption.

Posted by hj | March 16, 2008 11:24 AM

The Economist is a good read and great substitute for Time or Newsweek.

Too many critics endow the object of their criticism with some kind of anthropomorphic quality that makes the criticism personal. Just about everything about The New Republic rubs me the wrong way (preaches DLC self-reliance while losing money, portrays itself as a home for intelligent informed discussion while publishing reams of speculative crap) and it's easy to say "that magazine sucks!" when what I really mean is a few articles suck in an otherwise good magazine that rubs me the wrong way. I think economists make their relationship to The Economist personal. I don't want to go to a Yankee game with Foreign Policy, don't want to go shopping for a new suit with Grit, don't want to attend a family BBQ with Playboy, and I don't want to talk economic policy with The Economist. None of this means there aren't times when I enjoy spending time with all these magazines on my own terms.

Posted by joejoejoe | March 16, 2008 11:25 AM

"I'm always a bit surprised by the depth of anti-Economist sentiment lurking out there in certain corners. "

Spoken like a true Obama supporter.

You lean right on economics, so of course the problem folks have with The Economist would surprise you.

Folks like Matthew and Andrew Sullivan and Marty Peretz don't have a problem with The Economist because it faithfully represents their political ideology.

Posted by Petey | March 16, 2008 11:27 AM

"It's the old problem: when everyone starts hearing about a good club or whatever, too many of the wrong sort of people start coming, and the quality sinks. I think Grouch Marx had something to say about that."

Take that, Mr. Bradley.

Posted by charlie | March 16, 2008 11:29 AM

The Economist is a ... great substitute for Time or Newsweek.

High praise indeed.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 16, 2008 11:31 AM

If you're only going to subscribe to one magazine, subscribe to the Economist, for all the reasons you outline-- the breadth of their coverage is great. However, since an annual subscription costs something like $130, for that kind of money, you can achieve the necessary breadth with the quirky coverage of things you hadn't heard of before going on in Africa and the Caribbean with 2-3 better periodicals.

They were on the ball with regards to the housing and subprime situation long before everyone else.

Ah, you see, the $130 Economist wasn't the only magazine to pick up on this. The $17/yr Harper's had a feature in which they saw the direction things were heading in back in early 2006. With your remaining $113, I'm sure you could fill in the other gaps with other magazines.

The Economist has some good things going for it, but the opportunity cost of subscribing makes it not worth your while.

Posted by Tyro | March 16, 2008 11:33 AM

You lean right on economics, so of course the problem folks have with The Economist would surprise you.

Petey, seriously, did you read the post? The one when I agreed with the from-the-left criticism of the Economist's take on economic policy?

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | March 16, 2008 11:45 AM

@southpaw:

The distinction between fact reporting and editorial stance is pretty well understood in political journalism.

Not in British journalism - the line is much more blurred than in the States. Arguably, that's better since the papers here don't even pretend to objectivity. When you pick up the Telegraph or the Economist or the Indy you know exactly what spin you're getting. Mind you, that's also why I don't read any papers regularly any more.

As a British lefty, I used to read the Guardian but got bored with it because I was basically paying to have my opinions recycled to me. So instead I went looking for an intelligent right-wing paper, on the theory that it'd be better value for money to get both facts and a contrary opinion. I settled on the Economist and read it from about 1999 to 2001. But I got bored with that after a while too, because although it was offering me a different opinion, it was offering the same different opinion week-in, week-out. Now I just pick and choose from different paper and online sources for my info.

Posted by Ovid | March 16, 2008 11:55 AM

I remain unconvinced that European economies should not liberalize their labor markets but I agree the magazine is predictable on such issues.

I also think the real problem with weeklies like the economist is that newspapers like the NYT have become so analytical that by the time Friday rolls around, you've already gotten pretty solid takes on the week's events. So it's on the topics that the big papers don't cover and the trends that others haven't caught yet that the magazine is best.

Posted by Blake H. | March 16, 2008 12:02 PM

Some people always hated the Economist - let's call them Nation types. Nation people and Economist people go way back, and will always disagree. We're almost like old friends.

I detect Economist-hating from a new set of people - your overly informed, intellectual set. The types who might have been reading it 10 years ago, but now see too many of the wrong people reading it on the train in the morning.

These people want to move on to a more exclusive club...seems like Monocle is one place they're drifting to. These people are vain, empty drifters, and mostly worthless. They are simply chasing fashion, the idea being to say one step ahead so you can be the one who's REALLY informed, and stare down your nose at the unwashed. Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

Posted by Steve C | March 16, 2008 12:08 PM

""I'm always a bit surprised by the depth of anti-Economist sentiment lurking out there in certain corners. "

Spoken like a true Obama supporter."

Whereas Hillary supporters are such dyed-in-the-wool populists and radical leftists that they won't have any of this flexible labor markets and pro-globalization nonsense. At least until NAFTA starts polling better.

True, the Economist's foreign news is mostly good enough to use in a comparative politics course at good universities. American weeklies don't have foreign offices any more, it seems. But the NY Times international page and some other dailies do. So the Economist's contribution is not exactly unparalleled in accessible mainstream journalism.

I think the depth of anti-Economist sentiment is pretty well explained by how smart some of its readers think they are for reading it, combined with the irritating coverage of the U.S. over the past few years. It's the equivalent of very wise Britons sending letters to Ohioans in support of Kerry in 2004. It was predictably annoying.

Posted by Colatina | March 16, 2008 12:08 PM

The Economist used to publish McMegan. Need I say anymore?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | March 16, 2008 12:11 PM

I got the Economist with flyer miles along with the Atlantic; they were both insanely cheap. Sure it has a bias towards opening markets etc, but it's not like that's a secret and they're trying to sneak it past us. Read it with your mental filters on and you're in good shape.

Posted by Matt B | March 16, 2008 12:11 PM

The consensus appears to be that the Economist a) has abandoned its intellectual honesty in order to support the Bush administration's economic policy; and b) can't be trusted to make a neutral presentation of the facts; and c) is nevertheless better than the lame U.S.-based general newsweeklies. Perhaps why there is no "must-read" newsweekly. If I want to check in with a disingenuous conservative portrayal of the issues, I can check in with National Review, Fox, or Fred Hiatt.

Posted by Chris | March 16, 2008 12:14 PM

Apprentice sorcerers are no end of trouble. I paid one to turn my ex wife into a newt and he totally changed her into a frog.

Posted by aleks | March 16, 2008 12:19 PM

In my mind, the biggest problem with the Economist is that those British friends tend to focus on being witty instead of being informative, and they can be almost arrogantly certain about topics they don't understand.

Half the news about India is elephant handler unioniziation or romance novel sales. When they do talk about Manmohan Singh, they are more likely to mention his Oxbridge education and his role in liberalization a decade ago (to show he is a good guy) than any of his recent accomplishments as PM.

We recognize this in their tin ear coverage of Bush, but they are even worse about other parts of the world.

Get your world coverage through FT or BBC. Even Google News will link to foreign newspapers.

Posted by desai | March 16, 2008 12:32 PM

It's interesting to see that none of the critics here have recommended an equally time consuming alternative. It's not really much of a criticism to say that you should read three times as much from other sources.
What I love about The Economist is that I can keep up to date on most of the important world events in three half hour subway rides. How else can I do that?

Posted by JK | March 16, 2008 1:12 PM

"Petey, seriously, did you read the post? The one when I agreed with the from-the-left criticism of the Economist's take on economic policy?"

I really think you're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?

Or put another way, if you want to associate yourself with Sullivan and Peretz, if you want to defend Goolsbee and attack universal healthcare, then folks might make certain assumptions about why you read The Economist.

Posted by Petey | March 16, 2008 1:20 PM

Man, Petey, when you jump the shark, you really jump the shark.

Posted by Hussein Kvenlander | March 16, 2008 2:01 PM

the post is good, enlightening reading MY - and so are the comments you've inspired.

Posted by jim | March 16, 2008 2:02 PM

the post is good, enlightening reading MY - and so are the comments you've inspired.

Posted by jim | March 16, 2008 2:04 PM

Way back in '91, Jim Fallows wrote a funny evisceration of The Economist in the Washington Post. Still interesting reading, it's available at http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/1991/10/.

Posted by Sanjay | March 16, 2008 2:14 PM

Brad DeLong (who should know) got fed up with the Economist's pro-Bush bias several years ago. He now strongly recommends the Financial Times as an excellent substitute. Speaking strictly for myself, I've glanced at the Economist a few times, but the biases put me off, and I don't read it.

Posted by beckya57 | March 16, 2008 2:15 PM

So, there seems to be a theme emerging in the comments:

A.) The Economist is biased in annoying ways, but...
B.) ...the breadth of its coverage is pretty great.

So, is there a publication out there that does B without A?

The Economist, for all its flaws (and they are legion) is just too convenient for me to ignore. It gives you a weekly overview of news from around the world, all in one package. The internet requires too much sifting; newspapers are too spotty in their coverage; tv news is awful. I'd love to find another publication that did the same without all the ideological baggage, but I am not sure there is one.

Posted by Andrew | March 16, 2008 2:19 PM

As a resident of Poland and a regular Economist reader, I want to remind Matt that in fact, Poland needs to liberalize its labor market.

A knee-jerk anti-liberal response to this usually valid recommendation lacks objectivity, Matt.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 16, 2008 2:30 PM

whoa, seriously -- did The Economist publish McArdle?

That truly would bring it down several notches.

Sorry Matty, but your colleague is a total idiot.

Posted by reader | March 16, 2008 2:36 PM

The Economist confuses opinion and viewpoint with being informed. Virtually all its political and economic coverage has an implicit viewpoint, indeed comes to the topic with that viewpoint, and seems to think that having that viewpoint means that it is well informed about the topic.

I have no doubt that some of its writers are in fact well informed. But more than a few of the ones who write about stuff that I actually know about (academic credentials and publications) very definitely have no more than a veneer of knowledge buffed highly with a gloss of self-assurance.

The best and truest thing ever written about The Economist was -- of course -- by America's best journalist, who just happenbs to be a longtime writer for this publication. It's called "The Colonial Cringe" and no doubt you can find it in The Atlantic archives.

Posted by Gene | March 16, 2008 3:03 PM

Sanjay
My apologies, I missed your post above in my hurry to snark. I need to improve my self-edit fundtion.

Posted by Gene | March 16, 2008 3:12 PM

I'm puzzled:

The FT is against labour market 'liberalization', they are not lackeys of international high finance, they want the US to turn into Sweden or something?

I've never read it, so despite the sarcasm, I'd really like to know.

Posted by novakant | March 16, 2008 3:13 PM

That the economist is better than time, newsweek, et al. and therefore worth reading is both damning with faint praise and an obvious logical error.

What is remarkable about the economist's audience is both their gullibility--"sure it's uniformly wrong and intellectually dishonest about everything I know about, but with everything else it does a wonderful job!"--and their (completely related) narcissism; the belief that it is possible to "learn about the world" by reading a newsweekly for a couple of hours a week, and the fact they do so is a sign of their intellectual seriousness and moral rectitude.

It should also be pointed out that almost everyone overestimates their personal bullshit detector by several orders of magnitude (i.e. MY knows Dave Berri is a charlatan, yet he still spreads his vile slur that Gilbert is overrated).

Posted by Client #11 | March 16, 2008 4:20 PM

Yeah, the gall that people have to want to know something about what's going on in the world, but having to work for a living also!

Seriously though, if you don't see the irony in calling others narcissistic in a post like that...

Posted by JK | March 16, 2008 5:14 PM

The Economist is just a degree above Gregg Easterbrook. Sure for the uninformed it seems smart but as soon as you know something the stupidity hurts.

Posted by Rob | March 16, 2008 5:29 PM

"Yeah, the gall that people have to want to know something about what's going on in the world, but having to work for a living also!"

You're right, I'm just out to crush the proletariat by criticizing the economist.

Posted by Client #11 | March 16, 2008 5:31 PM

It's been a while since I read the Economist, but I subscribe to the FT and think it's a fantastic newspaper. My sense is that it has similare biases to the Economist, but it's news pieces are less infected with editorializing. Also, it does not seem to push its hobby horses as much as the Economist.

Posted by blah | March 16, 2008 5:42 PM

Several people in this thread have sincerely asked, and now I will too: given The Economist's weaknesses (neoliberal bias, cocksure Oxbridge tone, etc.), what is a better weekly source of concise, well-organized, global political and economic news?

I'm open to checking out the Financial Times, but that option is flawed from the get-go: I'd really prefer not to have to deal with hunting out articles every single day in a newspaper. Is this really the best alternative?

Basically I wish there was an Economist equivalent that took an editorial line more like The Nation, The New Yorker, or The New Republic, even Slate -- all magazines I regularly read -- but I haven't come across it. Those three are fine for US political news (and for arts coverage and books reviews), but otherwise they're no help. They're way too provincial, in the sense that they make no attempt at all to keep an intelligent, curious left-of-center reader up to date with key developments in other countries. What the hell happened to the internationalist left? Apparently many activists and journalists (including James Fallows) would rather complain about the Economist than start their own comparable but alternative magazine! Thanks, that really helps us lowly readers out...

It would be great, Matthew Y, if you could do another post about this matter and ask this genuine question. I freely admit that maybe I'm overlooking a better source.

But then again, that said, one of my main reasons for reading the Economist regularly has always been to self-consciously learn what the influential neoliberal elite's perspective was on current events. Not because I agree, but because it's important to know it and to get a sense of how they're shaping matters.

Posted by Phil | March 16, 2008 5:56 PM

But if not the Economist, then what other news magazines are there in terms of relative non-bias in terms of non-economic matters, and level of information?

Posted by Quietus | March 16, 2008 6:15 PM

I grew up in under a mild Communist reign, which meant, among the others, that the press was reasonably informative, except that information had to be accompanied with some standard pius incantations. Hence, one was used to have an automatic decoder and filter while reading.

In this vein, if The Economists explains why right-wing crazies in, say, India, Poland or USA are much less dangerous and crazy than popular prejudice suggests, I think "oh, so it is THAT bad! ". And, without fail, it works. You see, you can pass a lot of information under the guise of refuting capitalist propaganda.

And, of course, as the last plenary meeting of the Central Committee sagely concluded, we have still plenty of work in removing structural rigidities from labour and capital markets. No good political programme is complete without it. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Except on the eve on Iraqi war my wife decided to get interested in foreign policy and she perused The Economist sans filter and decoder, with woeful results. Since then, we added a subscription of New York Review of Books.

Posted by piotr | March 16, 2008 7:02 PM

But if not the Economist, then what other news magazines are there in terms of relative non-bias in terms of non-economic matters, and level of information?

Answering such a question requires peeling off a few layers of self-evident truths. For instance, the left-right dichotomy around which all "intellectual" discussion in America is hung is essentially irrelevant to the political drives of most non-Western demographics. As another strike against perfect non-bias, consider that there is no mainstream Western publication that challenges the presumptive historical inevitability of "free markets".

As Walker observes above, we're all citizens of a new world of self-editing. Relying on a single source puts you firmly in Mark Twain's doghouse: "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." (This isn't too different from being a health-care consumer today, is it? Trust, but verify. Multiply.) The key when harvesting and synthesizing multiple viewpoints is to avoid demonstrable crap, for instance, the WSJ's editorial page.

Instead of tearing it apart for something as slippery and pervasive as bias, I praise The Economist for its unique strength: a playful and unyielding love, maybe even lust, for the English language. I only exaggerate slightly in saying that it's the only mainstream magazine that stands between us and the erasure of the thin black line between "your" and "you're".

Posted by Sanjay | March 16, 2008 7:39 PM

They're way too provincial, in the sense that they make no attempt at all to keep an intelligent, curious left-of-center reader up to date with key developments in other countries.

Correct - and you could say that about 98% of the blogs out there. For all the yapping about technology bringing people together and furthering mutual understanding, nothing noteworthy at all has happened in this regard, which is pretty sad if you think about it.

Posted by novakant | March 16, 2008 11:45 PM

Many of the problems with The Economist rest more in how their information is used than the magazine itself, though those problems are rather heady as well. The witty-yet-condescending British upper class tone is perfect for convincing the provincial would-be cosmopolitan via social pressure and a mastery of the art of rhetoric and wit, all the while often missing a valid argument. If you think Tom Friedman is a genius and Fareed Zakaria is left of center, then you probably put a great deal of trust in The Economist. The Economist is to midbrow political dialogue what the movie "Sideways" was to nouveau riche and new wine aficionados: their overwhelming confidence in their own intellect and taste easily swayed highly suggestible people wishing to look smarter than they really are (one convinces you to pay CEO's even more money and go into Iraq, the other convinces enough people to stop buying Merlot that the Merlot market crashes). It's not just a coincidence these two demographics overlap. If you aspire to be upwardly mobile, agreeing with the conventional wisdom in the Economist seems to be a shortcut to intellectual respectability.

Seriously though, I wouldn't have such a problem with the Economist if it wasn't for its use of tone. They can't write an article on the Democrats without complaining about how Dems like to attack big pharma. What they don't think about is that maybe big pharma in the US deserves to be criticized. The writers seem to be too self-important and convinced of their own cleverness (which probably masks the realization that they don't know a lot about much) to engage sufficiently with their subject. It reminds me a bit of reading vulgar Marxists who are more convinced that they are right on everything (due to having the "proper ideology") than I'm convinced I know about anything, including what I had for breakfast yesterday while I had a hangover.

Posted by Reality Man | March 17, 2008 3:05 AM

That Fallows article someone linked to above is spot on.

Posted by Reality Man | March 17, 2008 3:27 AM

Say what you want - Sideways is a great film.

Posted by novakant | March 17, 2008 8:44 AM

Get your world coverage through . . . BBC

Oh, yeah, no bias there. Just because you agree with the bias doesn't make it okay.

They can't write an article on the Democrats without complaining about how Dems like to attack big pharma

All of Europe free-rides on US Pharma expenditures. If the Dems were to succeed in constricting Pharma's US profits, there would be a material adverse effect (mostly in the form of reduced R&D--so not for a few years) on Europe's free-riding. It's simply self-interest for the Economist's editors to argue against changes in US Pharma policy.

the FT . . . it's a fantastic newspaper

2. But dailies and weeklies aren't very good analogues, at least in the internet era. If I didn't have internet access (or a hour-plus train ride), the FT would likely be my daily news source. As it stands, the internet does the job better--esp. b/c most of the FT is available online same day, one way or another.

Posted by zaleriana | March 17, 2008 11:28 AM

Is everyone accusing The Economist of a "pro-Bush bias" aware that it endorsed Kerry in 2004?

Posted by reality check | March 17, 2008 1:19 PM

The Economist did endorse Kerry in 2004, but did so reluctantly. (

In 2000 they endorsed George W. So there you go.

Posted by Lisa | March 17, 2008 2:18 PM

Was anyone *enthusiastic* about Kerry in '04? "Better than the worst president since Harding" is hardly a ringing endorsement!

Posted by reality check | March 17, 2008 3:08 PM