The Dani’s, Henry’s, and D-Squared’s of the world can probably pick out the substantive reasons to criticize and have the wherewithall to do better finding information elsewhere. I wonder how many commenters here are rejecting the mazazine because they disagree with it’s point of view, and smugly go to publications whose biases are even worse (Harper’s, anyone?) because they like the viewpoint better.

Of course, one should read a variety of news sources, and I do, but it should be frankly embarrassing to the supposedly internationalist left (social democratic sense) that they’ve long ceded an important, practical news role to the neoliberal, rightwing-apologist Economist.

As for others suggestions: yes, I read Le Monde Diplomatique from time to time but c’mon that’s monthly. And it’s format isn’t about trying to give one a straightforward overview of political and economic current events.

This is intriguing. Would you expatiate?

As much as i adore intelligence in any shape or form, i strongly dislike when that intelligence is used to fuel ones arrogance. Since i don’t know “you?” personally, i can only assume that my feeling of your arrogance is a produce of my own imagination.

Am i right?

The biases are clear, and as long as you read it with that in mind, there something worthwhile to find within most editions.

As someone who identifies as a social democrat, I feel that many of the problems identified above can be found in all papers, regardless of specific ideological bent.

Otherwise, I’d agree with dpoyesac: The E is a newspaper, not a research journal or a popular social science journal, and should be considered as such. It is perfectly ok that Rodrik and others feel that some of the substance and details in, say, economic research goes missing in the reporting – fortunately for us, Rodrik is a worthwhile blogger :-)

(In all honesty I should declare that I’ve done some minor work for the Economist Intelligence Unit and even once been quoted by Charlemagne for a very … hmmm … ironic comment about the Swedish social insurance system).

CrocodileChuck

Second, it is refreshingly open about its biases in a word where everybody is perpetually calling out their ideological opponents for having hidden or subjugated biases. Yeah, they may be predictably open-market, but they never cloak an open-market stance with insincere claims of ideological neutrality. They wear their ideology on their sleeve and will even, on occasion, make attempts to defend it.

Finally, there is a strong moral sense motivating the writers and editors. Their claim isn’t that market liberalization is just the right thing to do—it is the pragmatic thing to do because it will help the poor and the downtrodden in the long run. Many claim to believe this, but will then choose free markets when they happen to conflict with the needs of the poor. When these conflicts do in fact arise (since reality is never as simple and clean as we want in in our academic and theoretical simulations), the Economist editors tend to back the needs of the poor and downtrodden.

But it’s good to read a variety of different news sources and make judgements about their relative reliability.