Both are notoriously, extremely biased on all kinds of topics, for example Brexit/the EU. The Financial Times actually flies the EU flag above its offices: rather hard to get a clearer statement of bias than that.
Well, I provided some evidence for the FT. Do you think a newspaper that literally flies the flag of a foreign government over its offices is going to be critical of that government?
I'm not sure how you'd prove this rigorously though. Just look at other comments in this thread. One commenter observes he never saw a pro-Brexit op-ed in the FT, ever. They're always anti.
I doubt editorial policy is dictated by proximity to flags, so I'll leave that aside.
The FT and Economist are both focused on economic issues. I don't think you can expect them to campaign for a cause that is (by the admission of its supporters) going to damage the economy. They do consider the positive economic outcomes and possibilities of Brexit within their reporting, but there just aren't many compared to the negative ones. I don't think that's biased, it's fact, and it's fact that is agreed upon by both sides of the debate.
That's a really weird construction, almost feels bad faith. I meant that the flag is dictated by proximity to their editorial policy, the other way around as you put it here is nonsensical. You're arguing with a strawman.
The idea that Brexit will harm the economy is:
1. Highly controversial to begin with. Plenty of Leave campaigners and voters were motivated by a belief that the EU is sclerotic and adopts many anti-growth economic policies that could be reversed or ignored once out. The idea it's economically harmful is not at all agreed on by both sides, but if you read the FT you can be forgiven for having a highly one-sided view on this!
2. Discredited. The whole population was told even just voting to leave would cause a huge recession. In fact the economy grew. Economists quite clearly cannot predict the effects of Brexit because they tried already and were as wrong as wrong can be.
Even Paul Krugman admitted that the stated beliefs of economists on Brexit were "dubious" and "motivated reasoning" ... of course he only admitted this after the vote was in:
What we’re hearing overwhelmingly from economists is the claim that it will also have severe short-run adverse impacts. And that claim seems dubious. Or maybe more to the point, it’s a claim that doesn’t follow in any clear way from standard macroeconomics — but it’s being presented as if it does. And I worry that what we’re seeing is a case of motivated reasoning, which could end up damaging economists’ credibility.
At this point, reporting on what economists think is about as useful as reporting on what epidemiologists think. They all disagree on everything all the time, so it's a way for the journalists to speak through their chosen 'experts'.
As a long-time subscriber I think it's more accurate to say they are selectively focused on economic issues. They publish plenty of non-economic pieces which align with their view of the world.
I don't agree. I've paid to subscribe to the FT for over ten years, and used to subscribe to the Economist before letting it lapse. They are not neutral and especially in the case of the FT, this has gotten a lot worse in the last few years.
Both papers do provide quite good coverage of particular economic topics, framed by their editorial perspective. But if your understanding of Brexit or Trump (or anything politically contentious) comes only from the FT, you are setting yourself up for a huge surprise.
