History and Ownership
– The Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by John Edward Taylor and the Little Circle.
– It merged with the British Volunteer in 1825 and became The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer.
– The Scott Trust Limited was created in 1936 to secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian.
– The trust remains the owner of The Guardian, along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly.
– Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders.
– The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015.
– The newspaper changed its name to The Guardian in 1959, reflecting its focus on national and international affairs.
Format, Circulation, and Stances
– Since 2018, The Guardian’s main newsprint sections have been published in tabloid format.
– As of July 2021, its print edition had a daily circulation of 105,134.
– The newspaper has an online edition, TheGuardian.com, as well as international websites for Australia, New Zealand, and the US.
– The readership of The Guardian is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion.
– The newspaper reaches over 23 million UK adults each month, including online readership.
– The Guardian earned respect during the Spanish Civil War for its support of the Republican government.
– The newspaper opposed Aneurin Bevan and encouraged readers to vote Conservative in the 1951 general election.
– The Guardian opposed the creation of the National Health Service.
– The newspaper strongly opposed military intervention during the 1956 Suez Crisis.
Notable Scoops and Awards
– The Guardian obtained notable scoops such as the News International phone-hacking scandal and the PRISM surveillance program.
– It led an investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing former Prime Minister David Cameron’s links to offshore bank accounts.
– The Guardian has been named newspaper of the year four times at the British Press Awards.
– It scored highest for digital-content news trust in a 2018 Ipsos MORI research poll.
– The paper’s print edition was found to be the most trusted in the UK from October 2017 to September 2018.
Abolition of Slavery and British Divisions over the Civil War
– The Guardian opposed slavery and supported free trade.
– It welcomed the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and called for compensation to the planters.
– The newspaper argued against restricting trade with countries that had not abolished slavery.
– The Manchester Guardian portrayed the Northern states as imposing a trade monopoly on the Confederate States during the American Civil War.
– The newspaper supported the Confederacy’s right to self-determination but criticized Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation for not freeing all slaves.
– Some British towns, including Liverpool, supported the Confederacy.
– The Union blockade caused suffering in British towns.
– The assassination of Abraham Lincoln shocked the British community.
Controversies and Investigations
– The Guardian challenged the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Treason Felony Act 1848.
– It published a column by Charlie Brooker that sparked controversy and led to an apology.
– The newspaper investigated tax avoidance by major UK companies and published a database of tax paid by FTSE 100 companies.
– The Guardian played a pivotal role in exposing the News of the World phone hacking affair.
– The newspaper has been accused of biased criticism of Israeli government policy and bias against Palestinians.
– The Guardian received complaints about language used to describe Jews and Israel, leading to corrections and revisions.
– The Guardian’s involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has sparked controversy and debate.
– The newspaper launched a letter-writing campaign in Clark County, Ohio during the 2004 US election.
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, before it changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.
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 Front page on 28 May 2021 | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet (1821–2005) Berliner (2005–2018) Compact (since 2018) |
| Owner(s) | Guardian Media Group |
| Founder(s) | John Edward Taylor |
| Publisher | Guardian Media Group |
| Editor-in-chief | Katharine Viner |
| Founded | 5 May 1821 (as The Manchester Guardian, renamed The Guardian in 1959) |
| Political alignment | Centre-left |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | Kings Place, London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Circulation | 105,134 (as of July 2021) |
| Sister newspapers | The Observer The Guardian Weekly |
| ISSN | 0261-3077 (print) 1756-3224 (web) |
| OCLC number | 60623878 |
| Website | theguardian.com |
The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main newsprint sections have been published in tabloid format. As of July 2021[update], its print edition had a daily circulation of 105,134. The newspaper has an online edition, TheGuardian.com, as well as three international websites, Guardian Australia (founded in 2013) Guardian New Zealand (founded in 2019) and Guardian US (founded in 2011). The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and the term "Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of a person with liberal, left-wing or "politically correct" views. Frequent typographical errors during the age of manual typesetting led Private Eye magazine to dub the paper the "Grauniad" in the 1970s, a nickname still occasionally used by the editors for self-mockery.
In an Ipsos MORI research poll in September 2018 designed to interrogate the public's trust of specific titles online, The Guardian scored highest for digital-content news, with 84% of readers agreeing that they "trust what [they] see in it". A December 2018 report of a poll by the Publishers Audience Measurement Company stated that the paper's print edition was found to be the most trusted in the UK in the period from October 2017 to September 2018. It was also reported to be the most-read of the UK's "quality newsbrands", including digital editions; other "quality" brands included The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and the i. While The Guardian's print circulation is in decline, the report indicated that news from The Guardian, including that reported online, reaches more than 23 million UK adults each month.
Chief among the notable "scoops" obtained by the paper was the 2011 News International phone-hacking scandal—and in particular the hacking of the murdered English teenager Milly Dowler's phone. The investigation led to the closure of the News of the World, the UK's best-selling Sunday newspaper and one of the highest-circulation newspapers in history. In June 2013, The Guardian broke news of the secret collection by the Obama administration of Verizon telephone records, and subsequently revealed the existence of the surveillance program PRISM after knowledge of it was leaked to the paper by the whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. In 2016, The Guardian led an investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing then–Prime Minister David Cameron's links to offshore bank accounts. It has been named "newspaper of the year" four times at the annual British Press Awards: most recently in 2014, for its reporting on government surveillance.