Leader in public opinion
I’ve been meaning to get to this for the past week, but it’s been a very full news week.
Michael Cook at MercatorNet has this good and probing piece about one of my favorite news magazines, The Economist. In the global news realm, I appreciate their research, writing, especially their style — which is refreshingingly not the ubiquitous American news magazine-speak — and their effort to incisively analyze and let the chips fall where they may. That can sometimes be annoying, of course, and on several occasions I’ve thought they were dead wrong.
But dead wrong takes on a whole other meaning in the flaw Cook finds in The Economist.
More than a magazine, The Economist is an institution – a relic of the Victorian era founded upon the economics of Adam Smith and the morals of John Stuart Mill which has adapted superbly to modern times. In the post-modern age of fragmentation and doubt its business is certitude. But with flair: its covers are often hilarious; its style sober, garnished with sly humour. Headlines in Latin pop up from time to time; allusions to Shakespeare and English poets pepper the text. It is supremely readable and entertaining…
The list of political and business luminaries who read it religiously is long and impressive…Even its rivals are glowing in their praise…
Which makes it all the more disturbing when The Economist takes up the cudgels in favour of infant euthanasia. The UK’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has suggested that the rights and wrongs of actively killing disabled infants should be debated. It is hardly surprising that doctors paid to kill infants on one side of the birth canal should seek permission to kill them on the other side, too. But it seems odd that the world’s most respected magazine should swallow their arguments and drizzle them with treacly sentimentality: “Tiny babies do tug at the heartstrings but raising a severely impaired child is heartbreakingly hard. It is brave of doctors to dare to question whether they should save the life of each and every one.”
Brave? How about immoral? How about cowardly? How about inhuman? How could the world’s best news magazine be so wrong-headed about killing babies?
The Economist prides itself upon “its objective, factual writing, rather than… emotive journalism”, but on nearly every important moral issue, the ghost of John Stuart Mill whispers that morality must be dismissed as an inconvenient superstition. Should the West shower Africa with condoms to prevent AIDS? Naturally — “morality must take second place”. Same sex marriage? Obviously — “The case for allowing gays to marry begins with equality, pure and simple.” Legalise prostitution? Why not? “What consenting adults do in private is their own business.” Should Olympians take drugs? — It is “shrill” and “intolerant” to suggest otherwise. And so on.
Despite the vast common sense and analytical clarity of its business and political analysis, The Economist wears the ideological blinkers of a Victorian free-thinker. It racks moral arguments on the Procrustean bed of Mill’s libertarianism. For instance, the author of one of its excellent surveys defends the legalisation of illegal drugs by citing the great man: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Like Mill, The Economist regards the person as an autonomous, self-sufficient individual who shapes his own good without reference to society.
When I read a respected news journal like The Economist, I understand its biases going in, appreciate the good news coverage and analysis, and leave aside those articles that reflect the radically secular worldview as opposed to the natural law and moral order that grounds….everything. But readers not well informed by those truths about humanity are easily led and molded by wrong-minded reporting when it’s from authoritative news leaders.
Cook calls The Economist’s ideology “nonsense.” But he follows up with an important point.
All journalism reflects the ethical prejudices of an author – even at The Economist.
All politics, news reporting and even decisions from the bench in courts of law reflect someone’s worldview, someone’s morality. They don’t necessarily have to be avoided. But they do have to be engaged.
