The Economist is one of the least biased sources of news, that routinely publishes letters, opeds and articles contradicting the sated editorial agenda. Very few other news sources actually do that.

They're not perfect, but it sure beats NYT.

If you want the optimal news coverage without needing to read a million sources - The Economist, Financial Times, WSJ and The Guardian.

As I said, they show both sides, but they choose which two.

They are not as forthcoming with their biases as it seems. They mainly set up their ideological oppositions as conservatives, but they in fact have a lot in common with them. This is especially true for foreign relations.

I'd be happy to see examples of articles that go against the Economists' editorial agenda in profound ways and that pertain to foreign policy.

If you want news coverage that is any good at all and you care about foreign affairs you absolutely have to include at least one and preferably two non-anglophone or non-western sources that preferably oppose each other.

A good barometer I have for journals as far as foreign policy is their coverage of the Iraq War before it began. As far as I can see the Economist published almost nothing opposing it, limiting themselves to surface-level reporting of anti-war arguments in the sole goal of defeating them.

I don't understand why you would limit yourself, if you had to choose 4 sources, to 4 centrist anglophone sources. It seems like a very biased media diet.

If you only read the English language then you're kind of mostly limited to "anglophone", no?

And how can 4 "centrist" sources be "very biased"? Isn't it literally the opposite?

Centrism is a political position just the same as any other, and is just as biased.

Most major news sources in the world report in English too. So you can indeed read news from sources that aren't from culturally similar anglophone countries and instead are from anywhere in the world.

> And how can 4 "centrist" sources be "very biased"? Isn't it literally the opposite?

No, centrism isn’t the opposite of bias.

Centrism is a position toward which there can bias of any strength. Position of bias on a left/right (or any other ideological) axis and strength of bias or two orthogonal, continuous dimensions.

In theory, perhaps.

But in practice "centrist" news sources are far more likely to present multiple points of view -- e.g. a left and right one -- while "left" and "right" news sources generally do not.

But at a deeper level, centrism isn't really an ideology at all, in the way the left and right can be. You can be a hard-core leftist or you can be a hard-core conservative, but the idea of a "hard-core centrist" doesn't really exist.

So I'd argue centrism can be the opposite of bias in a very real way. It's about dropping bias towards ideologies, and treating issues in a practical balanced way.

> But in practice "centrist" news sources are far more likely to present multiple points of view

No, in practice less strongly biased sources are more likely to present multiple points of view. Now, the same amount of variation can seem more diverse when you tend to bucket things into “left/right” binary categories, if the center of variation is near the point where you draw the line between buckets.

But that's an artifact of forcing things into binary buckets making a centrist outlet providing center-left to center-right views look more diverse than a right-wing publication providing center-right to far-right views.

> This is especially true for foreign relations.

Their latest issue literally has a massive article against vaccine nationalism. Their opposition to breaking of the Iranian deal.

> A good barometer I have for journals as far as foreign policy is their coverage of the Iraq War before it began

That's very arbitrary, considering that 18 years have passed. The Economist has changed hands and most of its staff.

> 4 centrist anglophone sources

4 sources that aren't radical, have clear motivation behind them. Money makes people write in a particular way, that is easy to gauge.

Also - why would I read insane crap on either side, my job isn't to read news all day.

> That's very arbitrary, considering that 18 years have passed.

Also, not specific enough. Which Iraq war? The one in 2000's? 90s? 80s?

The one in the 2000s, obviously.

The Economist has not changed its bias in over a hundred and fifty years, staying firmly focused on economic liberalism. Eighteen years is nothing.

>4 sources that aren't radical, have clear motivation behind them. Money makes people write in a particular way, that is easy to gauge.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Just because they have a bias that is for the status quo doesn't mean they are more or less right. As far as I'm concerned all I'm getting from this is "I agree with this ideological bias and I don't want to read anything else"

Anyways, it's your decision to subscribe to a biased news diet. You're not any better because of which bias you choose than someone who only reads Newsmax or CNN.

If your assessment is that anything that's not from the same ideology as these four sources is "insane crap", which it isn't, good points are being made by people of all political persuasions, then it's clear that you have created your own media echo chamber.

I read both the NYT and the Economist, they are quite different publications so not really comparable in my view.

That said, the editorial stance of the Economist comes through extremely clearly in their writings and they are unabashedly economically liberal.

Your characterization of NYT as being less ideologically diverse really doesn't match my experience.

Your list is incredibly West focused and honestly not that ideologically diverse, with the Guardian I guess supposed to take the "left" position.

> NYT as being less ideologically diverse

NYT has lost my subscription, after they just straight up started running exaggerated stories.

> Your list is incredibly West focused

I read in 4 languages, would you like some news sources in Russian, Lithuanian or Italian?

+1. I sometimes regret subscribing to Financial Times, but their bias is pretty easy to identify and accept/reject once you understand it. I counterbalance it with Jacobian (far-left/communist - choose your adjective - news).

There's an adage in math modeling/statistics: all models are wrong, but some are useful.

Here, all newspapers are biased, but some are useful.

Jacobin, not Jacobian :)

Unless there is some link between calculus and socialism that I have yet to discover

I don't understand why people keep arguing against journals or newspapers because they are allegedly ideological or biased. Everybody is ideological and biased. Are they afraid they might lose all their critical thinking skills once they read such a journal and somehow be influenced or brainwashed without realizing it?

The people who recommend against those medias already believe of themselves that they are better informed and able to recognize the bias. If they are that critical, then they should have no troubles consuming biased and ideological media, and they shouldn't assume without further evidence that others don't have the same ability.

Especially in this case it's weird, because the journal is called The Economist. Obviously you'd expect some bias pro economy there.

Of course not, I myself read it often.

I'm arguing against the GP that said that it's okay to read only the Economist. It's not okay to read only a single source. You can be as critical as you want but if you no longer have any bearings on a subject you're being led by the nose.

Also, "pro-economy bias" is pretty vague. There are many ways one could be biased in a way so as to focus on a better economy, and they can be radically different.

Media is already plural. Medium is the singular.

That's true. Although it's worth mentioning that "mediums" is also accepted as a plural of "medium" in English, but not when it's used for communication media.

> In any case, the Economist is not any worse than any other mainstream publication. Often they do pretty good reporting. But you absolutely must not rely on it solely especially for foreign reporting where you don't have bearings.

I think this is perhaps misguided. It's not fair to the economist to compare an article on, eg. politics in Brazil, against the nuanced understanding that a Brazilian citizen would have, because most people from North American with no other ties to Brazil would have no frame of reference.

In other words, the choice is not, a simplified version of the issues vs a nuanced understanding, it's a simplified understanding of the issue vs none at all.

I lived in Brazil for many years and read the local news closely.

Whenever the Economist published an article on Brazilian politics, it was generally far superior and far more insightful than anything in the local press. Which genuinely surprised me.

Remember -- most local news sources, whether in the US or Brazil, aren't nuanced at all. They're surface-level and sensationalistic.

But while Brazil has a home-grown news equivalent of Time ("Veja"), as well as USA Today (O Globo) it simply doesn't have any home-grown news source at the level of sophistication of the Economist, not even for domestic news.

For what it's worth, I find the same is true of Canada. We have some decent news organizations but whenever there is an Economist article about Canada, I find the insights a bit deeper and the context more complete.

Interesting, I am often find nonplussed by their cover of Canadian stories, especially by what they choose to cover - "buttergate" and dearth of some obscure condiment Asians use in Vancouver come to mind as recent examples.

I find The Globe & Mail and MacLeans quite solid when it comes to news coverage.

But this is a bit of a false dichotomy. There is no reason why you would have to limit yourself to North-American sources here. Plenty of news agencies around the world have articles in English without the anglophone bias it may bring.

And even non-local sources may still bring some enlightenment. If you were trying to understand Brazilian politics but couldn't read any Brazilian sources, it would still be much better to read Anglo, European and, say, Middle Eastern reporting and then consider the differences in reporting and how they might be linked to their worldview.

Besides, oftentimes a simplistic and biased understanding whose inaccuracy is not understood is much worse than no understanding at all. At least in the second case you are aware of your ignorance and will probably be more weary of rash action.

An example of such thinking from last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392455

It used to be a much better magazine.