We’re publishing an original essay today by David Stacey about the failure of the Economist to critically evaluate the pro-lockdown case. You’d expect the Economist, which prides itself on its mastery of data and its political independence, to inject a note of scepticism into its coverage of the global pandemic. Instead, it’s just slavishly regurgitated the official narrative. Here’s an extract:
With its data analysts, its unquestionably talented writers and economically literate worldwide readership the Economist was surely well placed to rise above the global Covid hysteria and rigorously pursue its masthead ambition of “taking part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress”.
From the start, however, it has, along with the rest of the legacy media, been consumed by an ostensibly virtuous but myopic fixation on “death with covid” mortality figures to the exclusion of all else. At the same time as Andrew Lewis observed in a letter to the magazine on July 24th 2021, portraying those who oppose lockdowns as “crackpots motivated by conspiracy theories”. Each week the Economist’s pages have been filled with the evidence of the disastrous costs of lockdowns (which it unfailingly refers to as the “cost of covid”) and the economic and social crises they have created, while failing to show that the lockdowns made any material difference to the spread of the virus. The Economist had the opportunity to provide serious, fearless, real-world, data-driven coverage that challenged the official “truth”, shone a light on the unprecedented vested interests and explored other strategies, the economic impact of which might have been less disastrous, not least for developing countries. Countries with whose welfare the magazine has previously aligned itself, where tens of millions have been plunged into poverty.
Worth reading in full.
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Since Zanny Minton Beddoes became its editor the Economist stopped any kind of considered, rational, critical journalism about a series of important issues to turn it into a campaigning, mouthpiece for the agendas set by her globalist friends in the Bilderberg Group and the UN. She has made sure that The Economist pursues relentless, uncritical, fear-mongering activism over Brexit, Global Warming and Covid and ensured the blinkered trivialisation of what used to be one of the world’s most reliable and important magazines.
The Economist has been a joke (as far as economics go) for the past two decades. It is now a wokerati rag. Serious analysis? Get serious!
”You’d expect….” No, we wouldn’t. Money talks. Every man has his price. Etc.
I gave up all msm 18months ago. Boy does that feel,good. The Economist has always been a namby pamby rag.. Never willing to take stance on well, on anything.
Who owns the Economist?
‘Political independence’? The ECONOMIST? Come on Toby, get real!
An appalling outfit. Its long-standing euro-nutter stance and offensively smug house style – plus the shallowness of the articles – destroyed its credibility many years ago.
Totally off-topic, but I recently came across this site looking at the effects of ivermectin, and everyone should know about it: https://ivmmeta.com
Gave up reading The Economist years ago. Its irritating article headings, absence of impartial or informed analysis, self-satisfied preaching, sharp move away from its free trade pro market origins makes it worse than The Guardian.
Nooo!
Nothing was, is, or ever will be worse than that thing.
This criticism is also legitimately be levelled at so many elements of traditional (trending legacy) media. It was not difficult to substantiate sceptical analyses, from as early as March/April 2020; and yet it was not done. A huge amount of unnecessary collateral damage has followed. Well said the author.
Unfortunately, as a 25+ year subscriber to The Economist, it continues to drift ever further to the political and ideological technocratic left, like all main stream legacy media, and incresingly most facets of modern Western society.
Similarly, this phenomenon feels to have expotentially accelerated since the Hayekian retreats of the dot-com bubble stimulus, the subprime bubble stimulus, Sue “Zanny” M-B’s introduction and the political class rejection of deplorable results in 2016 of democracy – and this is during China’s totalitarian success of the past 3 deacdes, an appealing alternative to democracy for the political classes.
Whereas to my experience it may once have claimed to be politically impartial, centrist or centre right and conservative, writers have been emboldened to produce personally scathing main-article pieces against Trump, Johnson, their administrations and conservatve economic and politcal values, whether one feels they’re deserving or not.
Their preposterous model of Covid-19 statistic ‘estimates’ is a classic case. They simply extrapolated the vastly overclocked case, hospitalization and death figures from the UK and US to the rest of the world, already perenially debunked on this excellent website. Opting not to instead, conservatively extrapolate the far fewer, and arguably more accurate figures; realistic cases of positive… Read more »
The Economist have for a couple of decades promoted and supported a digital currency, the WEF Great Reset / Fourth Industrial Revolution agenda and Transhumanism and AI.
Its writers are all wealthy metropolitan elite types usually with links to the UN, World Economic Forum and Globalist NGOs. Many also hold directorships and advisory roles with big business.
It was previously entirely owned by the Rothchild banking dynasty, who aren’t exactly know to care for the interests of the slave class.
Why on earth is it a surprise they supported the anti human, soulless lockdown? I would be amazed if they didn’t. Unfortunately, I used to give money to them every week.
The last thing the Economist is, is ‘politically independent’.
If you think that’s bad, try “New Scientist” weekly. But Don’t buy the dam thing.
Absolutely 100% devoted to bigpharma and the miracle of “vaccination”.
Any critical analysis allowed?
What do you think.
I gave it up over two years ago. Screw them and most of the rest of the MSM especially the BBC.
Phew, I feel a bit better for that rant.
Yes, NS is very diappointing nowadays. It has swallowed the Climate Change agenda hook line and sinker, and wont brook any discussion on the matter
Absolutely right. For a rag that regularly poked fun at religion, it has espoused the Covid religion with astounding commitment.
Since when has ‘The Economist’ had anything to do with economics?
Globalist propaganda rag pushes globalist propaganda line. Hardly news.
I have been subscriber to The Economists for more than 50 years and I have worked closely in the past with some of their journalists and editors. From this perspective it is clear that the magazine has gone various incarnations. Even today much of the reporting remains better than anything you will get in the daily press. However, the editorial line has become more aligned with fashionable East Coast (US) opinion. In part this reflects the increasing dominance of US subscriptions and corporate advertising. In addition, the background and interests of the editors has shifted. This started a couple of editors ago but has become very apparent under the current editor. Her husband has longstanding ties to the Washington Post and Newsweek (both controlled by Bezos nowadays).
A related factor is their almost total abomination of Trump and the wider views of Republican America. In the past Economist reporters were interested in the flyover states. Today these only serve the purpose of demonstrating the rightness of liberal East/West Coast opinion. As US politics has become more polarised The Economist has chosen or been pushed to become more and more a mouthpiece for one side in that divide. Its editorial views… Read more »
You make it appear that, in order to stay relevant, this rag moulds itself to public opinion when in fact its the other way round. Its owners are attempting to mould public opinion into their way of thinking.
Yes, it’s another Social Engineering tool. They feed through their future vision of the world to future influencers through outlets like the Economist. Why else would the Rothschilds have held onto the title for years otherwise, they would have made a much better return financially elsewhere. All about keeping control of the narrative and controlling minds.
It’s indeed been a disappointment.
As was and is the vast majority of its audience, namely the managers, bankers, entrepreneurs and trade organisations, who all sold their souls too.
I use to listen to, and receive the newsletter of an ex-Economist writer Azeem Azhar, called Exponential View.
My interest waned shortly after his prediction that the virus would spread exponentially in March 2020, and like Sam Harris, he just turned into continual pushing of one doom laden mRna-tech-is-the-new-alchemy perspective from then on, it was really disappointing.
Reading his newsletters now, it seems clear he (and probably other Economist writers) are simply salesmen for big tech and tech startups, masquerading as journalists.
He is convinced that if we are at 450ppm CO2 by 2030, we’re all doomed. Naturally the only answer is “AI” (a ridiculously broad term similar to the old “big data” term), lithium batteries and solar power – sweeping away any negatives those technologies may entail.
The value of commenting here is that hopefully The Economist scan critical articles of themselves.
I used to love this magazine in the 80s when I was at university and it was free market oriented with good articles and features on geopolitics.
Stopped reading it in the 00s, when it was already going woke. Made the mistake of subscribing again three years ago. Total mistake and I have since canceled.
It is a pro Woke, pro Covid totalitarianism, pro Globalist polemic these days. I can get that for free by browsing the feeder pages on my Linked In account.
Fascinating how almost the entire Western worlds Third Estate has almost entirely gone mad en masse. Have been reading Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” over Christmas. Lots of parallels with what is happening now. Professor Desmet’s views of a Mass Formation also make a lot of sense and feel linked.
Worth remembering that the totalitarians of the past were often the most educated members of society. Goebbels had a phd, the Nuremberg Laws were written by Dr Wilhelm Stuckart, one third of the attendees at Wannsee had phds. The Bolsheviks were similarly intellectual.
There is a certain arrogance involved… Read more »
You identify totalitarians from the past but make no mention of who are todays totalitarians – and I’m not alluding to all the political puppets who do their bidding.
The Economist is a left-wing, Globalist magazine.
I’m not in the least bit surprised it, uncritically, pushed the left-wing, Globalist policy of lockdowns. Every part of the legacy media in the UK pushed the Government’s propaganda.
Only Talk Radio and in recent months GB News have pushed back a bit.
Talk Radio and GB News have only offered a very controlled questioning of the narrative within the Overton window.
The presenters on both outlets have defended Blairs Knighthood and won’t go near most subjects. What can we expect of Murdoch and Discovery Inc. owned outlets? (both World Economic Forum supporters).
“You’d expect the Economist, which prides itself on its mastery of data and its political independence”
Seriously TY? The Economist? Just who do you think your audience is?
Nice one.
The Economist is the bankers magazine, it’s their bit of fun. Who do you suppose is responsible for driving the covid fraud? Same people who deliberately crashed the world economy and walked away even richer.
‘Merchant bankers’, in rhyming slang.
Subscribed to this rag in the early 2000’s when still impressionable, and I imagined that I was getting an educated, highbrow, numbers-based view on the world. A little while later the GFC revealed that they offer only horribly biased pseudo-scientific reporting – with half-truths, twisted statistics and a forgetful rearview mirror. Shockingly bad from a numbers point of view, and I dropped them like a rock.
This Covid debacle revealed similar issues with the Spectator, and I’ve sadly had to drop them too. They offer only total and utter garbage on the politics of government restrictions and criminal vaccines. No wonder James left.
Are you actually James
Well spotted .
Both the Spectator and Spiked have been appalling throughout the C1984 scam.
I started a Spectator subscription but dropped it after the first month. Spiked lasted longer until Brendan O’Neill tried to make a case for mandatory “vaccination” of residential care home workers. That was one hot brick too far. Ditch. It hasn’t improved, still waffling about identity politics and trans rights, as if these will exist in the New World Order.
Not just the Economist. The whole imbecile crew. Look at the ‘scientific’ journals.
‘Political independence’????
How much money has the Economist received from Bill Gates?
William Who?
I wonder if the increasing signs that we’re facing inflation this year will make some of the economist editors take notice. However, I predict that, when they do, they’ll blame it on Brexit, as the CEO of the British Retail consortium has already done – scroll down here:
https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-ongoing-betrayal-tuesday-4th-january-2022/
There’s more on ‘covid chaos’ in that article – a ‘chaos’ which of course won’t lead to inflation – the idea!
It’s been at least five years since The Economist was worth reading. I used to pull articles and scan them to save them, then one day I realized I hadn’t pulled an article in months and cancelled my sub. They are still very good at showing a graph or chart, but making sense of it or stated the obvious the refuse to do if it will anger the wrong people. Sad.
I subscribed to it aged 17 years old. Ahead of my time!
Cancelled at 20.
Also ahead of my time!
The Economist supported the invasion of Iraq.
True to their title of economists, they are brilliant at telling you what happened after the fact but useless at advice or good judgement.
Expect a brilliant analysis in a few years time of why lockdowns and all the other measures were a mistake.
The latter point pre-empted by the Guardian this morning apparently.
Minton Beddoes? We had a house there. Delightfully unspoiled, you know.