The main stances that seem to go against coastal US media I've seen are:

1) Trans rights, particularly with youth transitioning. The Economist seems to have an article every week or two talking about health implications, controversy in female sports, or detransitioning.

2) Free speech. The Economist is very critical of any perceived censorship, and will frequently cover perceived excesses from the left in the US, particularly in higher education.

Generally I do not think the Economist does a great job of visually separating their editorial content from their news content. In many cases visual treatment of a column looks very close to a regular article, and the editorials at the front of each issue look (at a glance) indistinguishable from news stories. Each issue will also have a larger "briefing" on a prominent world issue that definitely blurs the lines between news and opinion. As a reader of many years, I've taken to skipping the editorial content, skimming the briefings, and taking the columns case-by-case. But I can imagine occasional readers having a different experience than I do.

They are good in that they are informative and not subtle about the voice of the paper. But it gets a little boring to me if I read it for a few months.

You may have interest in the writings of the Niskanen Center https://www.niskanencenter.org/ They work from a similar position. For example, I was hugely impressed by this essay https://www.niskanencenter.org/what-the-pandemic-revealed/

I don't know a regular publication devoted to this view, unfortunately.

I haven't read that particular essay, but maybe submit it?

? The 'classical liberal' position is literally the foundation of 'Libertarianism', which is a specifically modern American concept.

Those two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Historically, when The Economist was founded, libertarianism would have been associated with French anarchism. The core, consistent theme of libertarianism is that individual rights trump arbitrary interference by a collective. The various forms of anarchism are sort of natural "extreme" forms of libertarianism. Intellectually, libertarianism starts with a negative claim that except in extraordinary cases, the collective has no right to interfere with individuals. This remains true today. Core items (legalization of prostitution, drugs, elimination of many taxes) begin with the pretext that the collective has no right to regulate individual behavior in these domains.

Classical liberalism emerged in Britain (Locke, Smith, Mill, etc.). It has roots in a blend of English utilitarianism and enlightenment-era attempt to root the form of government in reason. "Rights" in classical liberalism are important, but they aren't necessarily more foundational than well-being. Anarchism is seem as trivially untenable (Hobbes' "nature red of tooth and claw"). Liberalism tries to identify a core set of functions (security, laws and their enforcement, public infrastructure) and a set of mechanisms (constitutions, elections, courts, etc.) to implement them, and has a very enlightenment-era emphasis on building institutions that are robust to "bad" actors. It does cleave towards a minimalist view of government, and does elevate rights like freedom of speech, but these are seen as intrinsically grey and are framed much more in terms of limiting the power of government institutions to ensure that they remain true to their mission/function.

I don't think that's flame bait, or super controversial.

Do the words mean something else to you?

Your own words "They represent the classical liberal position, which is not Libertarian, and never has been" make it seems like there is a clear cut difference between classical liberal and (modern) libertarian. Which is simply not true and unnecessarily divisive and seeking for flame war.

It is the mainstream view that classical liberal and libertarian are mostly equivalent in the modern context. The clear cut differentiation between classical liberal and libertarian is your own personal opinion. It is ok to have your own personal opinion, but it is exaggeration to state it as if it is the objective fact.

We're talking about the classification of a 170-year-old journal that operates out of the UK. I don't think the suggestion that libertarianism (particularly American libertarianism) is largely irrelevant when discussing The Economist is surprising, or shocking, or even terribly controversial. The suggestion that it would start a flame war is particularly odd as far as the content of the suggestion was concerned, although the tone of the comment you were responding to was a little blustery.

I'm sure a lot of the staff of The Economist and a lot of libertarians hold, say, Milton Friedman in high regard.

The clear cut distinction between classical liberalism and libertarianism, however, is not merely my own personal opinion. Although the intellectual landscape is complex and variegated, there's a fundamental difference in how the two lines of thinking argue, and what they accept as first principals. Classical liberalism is an institutionalist view that derives policy decisions using a utilitarian set of values that balances rights against other measures of well-being and sustainability.

Libertarianism, conversely, uses a first-principals rights-based way of approaching decisions. Just as an example, here's the front page of the Libertarian Party in the United States:

"<The Libertarian Party> is the only political party that respects you as a unique and responsible individual. Our slogan is that we are 'The Party of Principle' because we stand firmly on our principles. Libertarians strongly oppose any government interference in your personal, family, and business decisions. Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another."

This is pretty close to antithetical to classical liberalism. Classical liberalism explicitly seeks to suborn individual rights (which are not enshrined as intrinsically valuable) in a way that doesn't make us worse off than we started. The minimalism is classical liberalism is about outcomes, not about rights.

Obviously that's just a cheap banner page and not representative of libertarianism to everyone. I was surprised to find that it was closer to the original French meaning than I expected (which isn't important, but might be interesting).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_in_the_United_S...

Particularly with NPR, you have to focus on particular shows and stations. There's no central editorial staff for the content that comes from their member stations. For example the Takeaway has quite different editorial standards than All Things Considered or Morning Edition.

This is a while back, and an extreme example, but the pinnacle for me was the editorial (https://postimg.cc/hhkmfgN3) on the 9th of January 2012 where one could swap every reference it had on defending banks and financiers with references to slavery and slaveholders and the force of the argument would not change one jot. This was because it made absolutely no recourse to the wider context of impacts that the industry might have besides being of benefit to a city. It was just a whirr of rhetoric and really opened my eyes to the biases in play. The magazine's prestige has never quite recovered.

Fun aside, many other cases of journalistic bias are more about very selective reporting and emphasis, see for example the Bolivian election of 2020.

"There's no central editorial staff" - there's no need to have a central staff if you hire the same types of people.

Hear it from former senior NPR Exec. himself [1]

I'm not supporting this man's views at all, other than to point out he gives a fairly clear articulation into how 'bias' doesn't remotely need to have some kind of central authority and that it absolutely exists at NPR.

In fact, for someone who doesn't see the bias in something like NPR, learning to see the bias in an otherwise fairly respectable institution which does have fairly high standards and isn't so interest in flame-bait such as NPR - would be a worthy exercise.

'Culture' is probably the root of all bias in most places, not some 'central committee'. People who don't fit the mood are pushed said, those who have 'the correct opinions' are promoted. It's a perennial feature of human organisations you can see this in corporate culture as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0qyeFVf7bg&ab_channel=TheRu...

What I asked were for some concrete examples. Whenever the discussion comes up on bias at NPR (in particular) people tend to hand wave around "subtle, but fairly clear centre left bias."

In my opinion there is a bias, which I would call "radical centrism" (the Sisyphean task of trying to recognize bias and attempt to curtail it), and I could point to few in the past week as a regular listener, but whenever I hear "NPR has a liberal bias" I can't get anyone to give me concrete examples. It's taken as fact.

My overwhelming interpretation of the national NPR broadcasts are two part :

Firstly, the majority of it are human interest stories. They do not devote a majority of their air time to politics. I don't see how the Moth, Fresh Air, This American Life, or the handful of local shows I listen to regularly about local news stories trends anywhere but whichever direction is compelling to a listener.

And secondly, an opinion that I don't like articulating on HN or anywhere that might ruffle feathers is that facts have a liberal bias. You can argue until the cows come up about the role of government in society, but the cardinal direction of "reality" on the political compass is <- that way.

If something has elite consensus they will usually support it. This is probably the last place where youd want an ideological blind spot to be, also.

The selection of stories tells the tale. Whenever the topic de jour hits, you’ll get a good 7-10 minutes of patter about it every hour for a month.

I’m all for it, and don’t consider them “compromised”, but there’s typically not enough content to support that level of coverage.