Answer by Mark Byers for MySQL Multiple Left Joins

You're missing a GROUP BY clause:

SELECT news.id, users.username, news.title, news.date, news.body, COUNT(comments.id)
FROM news
LEFT JOIN users
ON news.user_id = users.id
LEFT JOIN comments
ON comments.news_id = news.id
GROUP BY news.id

The left join is correct. If you used an INNER or RIGHT JOIN then you wouldn't get news items that didn't have comments.