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''The Guardian'' is a British daily
newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the
Guardian Media Group Guardian Media Group plc (GMG) is a British-based mass media company owning various media operations including ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer''. The group is wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which exists to secure the financial and e ...
, owned by the Scott Trust. 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 a limited company, the liability of members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by Share (finance), shares or by guarantee. In a company limited by ...
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 journalism rather than distributed to owners or
shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal own ...
s. It is considered a
newspaper of record A newspaper of record is a major national newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative and independent; they are thus "newspapers of record by reputation" and include some of the o ...
in the UK. The editor-in-chief
Katharine Viner Katharine Sophie Viner (born January 1971)Katharine Vine"Dear diary ..." ''The Guardian'', 27 November 2004 is a British journalist and playwright. She became the first female editor-in-chief at ''The Guardian'' on 1 June 2015 succeeding Alan ...
succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main newsprint sections have been published in tabloid format. , its print edition had a daily circulation of 105,134. The newspaper has an online edition,
TheGuardian.com TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and ''Guardian Unlimited'', is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'', ...
, as well as two international websites, '' Guardian Australia'' (founded in 2013) and '' Guardian US'' (founded in 2011). The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion,''
International Socialism Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that ...
'', Spring 2003, .
and the term "''Guardian'' reader" is used to imply a stereotype of
liberal Liberal or liberalism may refer to: Politics * a supporter of liberalism ** Liberalism by country * an adherent of a Liberal Party * Liberalism (international relations) * Sexually liberal feminism * Social liberalism Arts, entertainment and m ...
, left-wing or " politically correct" views. Frequent
typographical error A typographical error (often shortened to typo), also called a misprint, is a mistake (such as a spelling mistake) made in the typing of printed (or electronic) material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual type-setting (typography). ...
s during the age of manual typesetting led ''
Private Eye ''Private Eye'' is a British fortnightly satire, satirical and current affairs (news format), current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely r ...
'' magazine to dub the paper the "" in the 1960s, a nickname still used occasionally 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
hey Hey or Hey! may refer to: Music * Hey (band), a Polish rock band Albums * ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014 * ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980 * ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title s ...
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 Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...
'', ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', 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 News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. New ...
—and in particular the hacking of the murdered English teenager
Milly Dowler Milly is a feminine given name, sometimes used as a short form (hypocorism) of Mildred, Amelia, Emily, etc. It may refer to: People * Milly Alcock (born 2000), Australian actress * Milly Babalanda (born 1970), Ugandan politician * Milly Bern ...
's phone. The investigation led to the closure of the ''
News of the World The ''News of the World'' was a weekly national Tabloid journalism#Red tops, red top Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling En ...
'', 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 Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...
of
Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
telephone records, and subsequently revealed the existence of the surveillance program
PRISM Prism usually refers to: * Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light * Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron Prism may also refer to: Science and mathematics * Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...
after knowledge of it was leaked to the paper by the
whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...
and former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...
. In 2016, ''The Guardian'' led an investigation into the
Panama Papers The Panama Papers ( es, Papeles de Panamá) are 11.5 million leaked documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) that were published beginning on April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 ...
, exposing then–Prime Minister
David Cameron David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...
'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.


History


1821 to 1972


Early years

''The Manchester Guardian'' was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant
John Edward Taylor John Edward Taylor (11 September 1791 – 6 January 1844) was an English business tycoon, editor, publisher and member of The Portico Library, who was the founder of the ''Manchester Guardian'' newspaper in 1821, which was renamed in 1959 ...
with backing from the
Little Circle The Little Circle was a Manchester-based group of Non-conformist Liberals, mostly members of the Portico Library, who held a common agenda with regards to political and social reform. The first group met from 1815 onwards to campaign for expande ...
, a group of non-conformist businessmen. They launched the paper, on 5 May 1821 (by chance the very day of
Napoleon's Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
death) after the police closure of the more
radical Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...
'' Manchester Observer'', a paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo Massacre protesters. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing: "They have appealed not to the reason but the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence. They do not toil, neither do they spin, but they live better than those that do." When the government closed down the ''Manchester Observer'', the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand. The influential journalist
Jeremiah Garnett Jeremiah Garnett (1793–1870) was an English journalist, active in the politics of London and the founding of ''The Manchester Guardian'' alongside his nephew Anthony Garnett. Life Jeremiah, younger brother of Richard Garnett (1789–1850) and ...
joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper, and all of the Little Circle wrote articles for the new paper. The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty ... warmly advocate the cause of Reform ... endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and ... support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures". In 1825, the paper merged with the ''British Volunteer'' and was known as ''The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer'' until 1828. The
working-class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
''Manchester and Salford Advertiser'' called ''The Manchester Guardian'' "the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners". ''The Manchester Guardian'' was generally hostile to labour's claims. Of the 1832 Ten Hours Bill, the paper doubted whether in view of the foreign competition "the passing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture in this kingdom would be a much less rational procedure." ''The Manchester Guardian'' dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators, stating that "if an accommodation can be effected, the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. They live on strife ... ."


Slavery and the American Civil War

The newspaper opposed slavery and supported free trade. An 1823 leading article on the continuing "cruelty and injustice" to slaves in the West Indies long after the abolition of the slave trade with the Slave Trade Act 1807 wanted fairness to the interests and claims both of the planters and of their oppressed slaves. It welcomed the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and accepted the "increased compensation" to the planters as the "guilt of slavery attaches far more to the nation" rather than individuals. Success of the Act would encourage emancipation in other slave-owning nations to avoid "imminent risk of a violent and bloody termination." However, the newspaper argued against restricting trade with countries which had not yet abolished slavery. Complex tensions developed in the United States. When the abolitionist George Thompson toured, the newspaper said that " avery is a monstrous evil, but civil war is not a less one; and we would not seek the abolition even of the former through the imminent hazard of the latter". It suggested that the United States should compensate slave-owners for freeing slaves and called on President
Franklin Pierce Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was a northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity ...
to resolve the 1856 "civil war", the Sacking of Lawrence due to pro-slavery laws imposed by Congress. In 1860, ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' quoted a report that the newly elected president Abraham Lincoln was opposed to abolition of slavery. On 13 May 1861, shortly after the start of the American Civil War, the ''Manchester Guardian'' portrayed the Northern states as primarily imposing a burdensome trade monopoly on the Confederate States, arguing that if the South was freed to have direct trade with Europe, "the day would not be distant when slavery itself would cease". Therefore, the newspaper asked "Why should the South be prevented from freeing itself from slavery?" This hopeful view was also held by the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone. There was division in Britain over the Civil War, even within political parties. The ''Manchester Guardian'' had also been conflicted. It had supported other independence movements and felt it should also support the rights of the Confederacy to self-determination. It criticised Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War. The Proclamation changed the legal sta ...
for not freeing all American slaves. On 10 October 1862, it wrote: "It is impossible to cast any reflections upon a man so evidently sincere and well-intentioned as Mr Lincoln but it is also impossible not to feel that it was an evil day both for America and the world, when he was chosen President of the United States". By then, the Union blockade was causing suffering in British towns. Some including Liverpool supported the Confederacy as did "current opinion in all classes" in London. On 31 December 1862, cotton workers held a meeting at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester which resolved "its detestation of negro slavery in America, and of the attempt of the rebellious Southern slave-holders to organise on the great American continent a nation having slavery as its basis". There was a comment that "an effort had been made in a leading article of the ''Manchester Guardian'' to deter the working men from assembling together for such a purpose". The newspaper reported all this and published their letter to President Lincoln
while complaining that "the chief occupation, if not the chief object of the meeting, seems to have been to abuse the ''Manchester Guardian''". Lincoln replied to the letter thanking the workers for their "sublime Christian heroism" and American ships delivered relief supplies to Britain. The newspaper reported the shock to the community of the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, while attending the play ''Our American Cousin'' at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the hea ...
in 1865, concluding that " e parting of his family with the dying President is too sad for description", but in what from today's perspective looks an ill-judged editorial wrote that " his rule we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty", adding "it is doubtless to be regretted that he had not the opportunity of vindicating his good intentions". According to
Martin Kettle Martin James Kettle (born 7 September 1949) is a British journalist and author. The son of two prominent communist activists, Arnold Kettle (best remembered as a literary critic; 1916–1986) and Margot Kettle (née Gale; 1916–1995), he was ed ...
, writing for ''The Guardian'' in February 2011, "''The Guardian'' had always hated slavery. But it doubted the Union hated slavery to the same degree. It argued that the Union had always tacitly condoned slavery by shielding the southern slave states from the condemnation they deserved. It was critical of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation for stopping short of a full repudiation of slavery throughout the US. And it chastised the president for being so willing to negotiate with the south, with slavery one of the issues still on the table".


C. P. Scott

C. P. Scott made the newspaper nationally recognised. He was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought the paper from the estate of Taylor's son in 1907. Under Scott, the paper's moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting
William Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-conse ...
when the Liberals split in 1886, and opposing the Second Boer War against popular opinion. Scott supported the movement for women's suffrage, but was critical of any tactics by the
Suffragettes A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...
that involved
direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...
: "The really ludicrous position is that Mr Lloyd George is fighting to enfranchise seven million women and the militants are smashing unoffending people's windows and breaking up benevolent societies' meetings in a desperate effort to prevent him." Scott thought the Suffragettes' "courage and devotion" was "worthy of a better cause and saner leadership". It has been argued that Scott's criticism reflected a widespread disdain, at the time, for those women who "transgressed the gender expectations of Edwardian society". Scott commissioned
J. M. Synge Edmund John Millington Synge (; 16 April 1871 – 24 March 1909) was an Irish playwright, poet, writer, collector of folklore, and a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival. His best known play ''The Playboy of the Western World'' was poorly r ...
and his friend
Jack Yeats Jack Butler Yeats RHA (29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) was an Irish artist and Olympic medalist. W. B. Yeats was his brother. Butler's early style was that of an illustrator; he only began to work regularly in oils in 1906. His early pict ...
to produce articles and drawings documenting the social conditions of the west of Ireland; these pieces were published in 1911 in the collection ''Travels in Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara''. Scott's friendship with Chaim Weizmann played a role in the
Balfour Declaration The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman regio ...
. In 1948 ''The Manchester Guardian'' was a supporter of the new State of Israel. Ownership of the paper passed in June 1936 to the Scott Trust (named after the last owner,
John Russell Scott John Russell Scott (12 July 1879 – 5 April 1949) was a British publisher. He was the owner of the ''Manchester Guardian'' and the ''Manchester Evening News''. Early life Scott was born in Manchester, the third child of C. P. Scott and his wif ...
, who was the first chairman of the Trust). This move ensured the paper's independence. From 1930 to 1967, a special archival copy of all the daily newspapers was preserved in 700 zinc cases. These were found in 1988 whilst the newspaper's archives were deposited at the University of Manchester's John Rylands University Library, on the Oxford Road campus. The first case was opened and found to contain the newspapers issued in August 1930 in pristine condition. The zinc cases had been made each month by the newspaper's plumber and stored for posterity. The other 699 cases were not opened and were all returned to storage at ''The Guardian''s garage, owing to shortage of space at the library.


Spanish Civil War

Traditionally affiliated with the centrist to centre-left Liberal Party, and with a northern, non-conformist circulation base, the paper earned a national reputation and the respect of the left during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).
George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
wrote in '' Homage to Catalonia'' (1938): "Of our larger papers, the ''Manchester Guardian'' is the only one that leaves me with an increased respect for its honesty". With the pro-Liberal '' News Chronicle'', the
Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...
-supporting ''
Daily Herald Daily or The Daily may refer to: Journalism * Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks * ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times'' * ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
'', the Communist Party's ''
Daily Worker The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were m ...
'' and several Sunday and weekly papers, it supported the Republican government against General
Francisco Franco Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War ...
's insurgent nationalists.


Post-war

The paper's then editor,
A. P. Wadsworth Alfred Powell Wadsworth (26 August 1891''1939 England and Wales Register'' – 4 November 1956) was a British journalist, author, and editor of ''The Guardian'' from 1944 until his death in 1956. Wadsworth became editor in 1944, when he succeeded ...
, so loathed Labour's left-wing champion
Aneurin Bevan Aneurin "Nye" Bevan PC (; 15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician, noted for tenure as Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's government in which he spearheaded the creation of the British National Health ...
, who had made a reference to getting rid of "Tory Vermin" in a speech "and the hate-gospellers of his entourage" that it encouraged readers to vote Conservative in the 1951 general election and remove Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government. The newspaper opposed the creation of the National Health Service as it feared the state provision of healthcare would "eliminate selective elimination" and lead to an increase of congenitally deformed and feckless people. ''The Manchester Guardian'' strongly opposed military intervention during the 1956
Suez Crisis The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli war, also called the Tripartite Aggression ( ar, العدوان الثلاثي, Al-ʿUdwān aṯ-Ṯulāṯiyy) in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel,Also known as the Suez War or 1956 Wa ...
: "The Anglo-French ultimatum to Egypt is an act of folly, without justification in any terms but brief expediency. It pours petrol on a growing fire. There is no knowing what kind of explosion will follow." On 24 August 1959, ''The Manchester Guardian'' changed its name to ''The Guardian''. This change reflected the growing prominence of national and international affairs in the newspaper. In September 1961, ''The Guardian'', which had previously only been published in Manchester, began to be printed in London.
Nesta Roberts Nesta Roberts (10 January 1913 – 16 January 2009) was a Welsh journalist and author, the first woman to be in charge of the news desk on a British national newspaper. She served as Paris correspondent of ''The Guardian'' from 1965 to 1972. Early ...
was appointed as the newspaper's first news editor there, becoming the first woman to hold such a position on a British national newspaper.


1972 to 2000


Northern Ireland conflict

When 13 civil rights demonstrators in Northern Ireland were killed by the Parachute Regiment on 30 January 1972 (known as Bloody Sunday), ''The Guardian'' wrote that "Neither side can escape condemnation." Of the protesters, they wrote, "The organizers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and
sniping A sniper is a military/paramilitary marksman who engages targets from positions of concealment or at distances exceeding the target's detection capabilities. Snipers generally have specialized training and are equipped with high-precision r ...
could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield." Of the British soldiers present, they wrote, "there seems little doubt that random shots were fired into the crowd, that aim was taken at individuals who were neither bombers nor weapons carriers and that excessive force was used". Many Irish people believed that the Widgery Tribunal's ruling on the killings was a whitewash, a view that was later supported with the publication of the
Bloody Sunday Inquiry The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry or the Saville Report after its chairman, Lord Saville of Newdigate, was established in 1998 by British Prime Minister Tony Blair after campaigns for a second inquiry by families of t ...
in 2010, but in 1972 ''The Guardian'' wrote that "Widgery's report is not one-sided" (20 April 1972). At the time the paper also supported
internment Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
without trial in Northern Ireland: "Internment without trial is hateful, repressive and undemocratic. In the existing Irish situation, most regrettably, it is also inevitable... .To remove the ringleaders, in the hope that the atmosphere might calm down, is a step to which there is no obvious alternative." Before then, in 1969, ''The Guardian'' had called for British troops to be sent to the region, stating that their deployment could "present a more disinterested face of law and order," but only on condition that "Britain takes charge."


Sarah Tisdall

In 1983, the paper was at the centre of a controversy surrounding documents regarding the stationing of
cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...
s in Britain that were leaked to ''The Guardian'' by civil servant Sarah Tisdall. The paper eventually complied with a court order to hand over the documents to the authorities, which resulted in a six-month prison sentence for Tisdall, though she served only four. "I still blame myself," said
Peter Preston Peter John Preston (23 May 1938 – 6 January 2018) was a British journalist and author. He was editor of ''The Guardian'' for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. Early life Peter Preston was born in Barrow upon Soar, Leicestershire, the son of J ...
, who was the editor of ''The Guardian'' at the time, but he went on to argue that the paper had no choice because it "believed in the rule of law". In a 2019 article discussing
Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...
and the protection of sources by journalists, John Pilger criticised the editor of ''The Guardian'' for betraying Tisdall by choosing not to go to prison "on a fundamental principle of protecting a source".


Alleged penetration by Russian intelligence

In 1994, KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky identified ''Guardian'' literary editor Richard Gott as "an agent of influence". While Gott denied that he received cash, he admitted he had had lunch at the Soviet Embassy and had taken benefits from the KGB on overseas visits. Gott resigned from his post. Gordievsky commented on the newspaper: "The KGB loved ''The Guardian''. It was deemed highly susceptible to penetration."


Jonathan Aitken

In 1995, both the
Granada Television ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire but only on weekdays as ABC Weekend Television was it ...
programme '' World in Action'' and ''The Guardian'' were sued for
libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
by the then cabinet minister
Jonathan Aitken Jonathan William Patrick Aitken (born 30 August 1942) is a British author, Church of England priest, former prisoner and former Conservative Party politician. Beginning his career in journalism, he was elected to Parliament in 1974 (serving unt ...
, for their allegation that
Harrods Harrods Limited is a department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. It is currently owned by the state of Qatar via its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority. The Harrods brand also applies to other ...
owner
Mohamed Al Fayed Mohamed Al-Fayed (; arz, محمد الفايد ; born 27 January 1929) is an Egyptian-born businessman whose residence and chief business interests have been in the United Kingdom since the late 1960s. His business interests include ownership of ...
had paid for Aitken and his wife to stay at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, which would have amounted to accepting a bribe on Aitken's part. Aitken publicly stated that he would fight with "the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play". The court case proceeded, and in 1997 ''The Guardian'' produced evidence that Aitken's claim of his wife paying for the hotel stay was untrue. In 1999, Aitken was jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice.


''Connection''

In May 1998, a series of ''Guardian'' investigations exposed the wholesale fabrication of a much-garlanded ITV documentary ''The Connection'', produced by Carlton Television. The documentary purported to film an undiscovered route by which heroin was smuggled into the United Kingdom from Colombia. An internal inquiry at Carlton found that ''The Guardian''s allegations were in large part correct and the then industry regulator, the ITC, punished Carlton with a record £2 million fine for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes. The scandal led to an impassioned debate about the accuracy of documentary production. Later in June 1998, ''The Guardian'' revealed further fabrications in another Carlton documentary from the same director.


Kosovo War

The paper supported NATO's military intervention in the Kosovo War in 1998–1999. ''The Guardian'' stated that "the only honourable course for Europe and America is to use military force".
Mary Kaldor Mary Henrietta Kaldor (born 16 March 1946) is a British academic, currently Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, where she is also the Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit. She also teaches ...
's piece was headlined "Bombs away! But to save civilians, we must get in some soldiers too."


Since 2000

In the early 2000s, ''The Guardian'' challenged the
Act of Settlement 1701 The Act of Settlement is an Act of the Parliament of England that settled the succession to the English and Irish crowns to only Protestants, which passed in 1701. More specifically, anyone who became a Roman Catholic, or who married one, bec ...
and the Treason Felony Act 1848. In October 2004, ''The Guardian'' published a humorous column by Charlie Brooker in its entertainment guide, the final sentence of which was viewed by some as a call for violence against U.S. President
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
; after a controversy, Brooker and the paper issued an apology, saying the "closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action." Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, ''The Guardian'' published an article on its comment pages by
Dilpazier Aslam Dilpazier Aslam (born 1978 in Yorkshire) is a former trainee journalist with ''The Guardian''. He came to public attention in July 2005 when he lost his position with the newspaper after being named as a member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir ...
, a 27-year-old British Muslim and journalism trainee from Yorkshire. Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group, and had published a number of articles on their website. According to the newspaper, it did not know that Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir when he applied to become a trainee, though several staff members were informed of this once he started at the paper. The Home Office said that the group's "ultimate aim is the establishment of an Islamic state (Caliphate), according to Hizb ut-Tahrir via non-violent means". ''The Guardian'' asked Aslam to resign his membership of the group and, when he did not do so, terminated his employment. In early 2009, ''The Guardian'' started a tax investigation into a number of major UK companies, including publishing a database of the tax paid by the FTSE 100 companies. Internal documents relating to Barclays Bank's tax avoidance were removed from ''The Guardian'' website after Barclays obtained a
gagging order A gag order (also known as a gagging order or suppression order) is an order, typically a legal order by a court or government, restricting information or comment from being made public or passed onto any unauthorized third party. The phrase may ...
. The newspaper played a pivotal role in exposing the depth of the ''News of the World'' phone hacking affair. '' The Economist'' '' Intelligent Life'' magazine opined that...


Israeli-Palestinian conflict coverage

In recent decades, ''The Guardian'' has been accused of biased criticism of Israeli government policy and of bias against the Palestinians. In December 2003, columnist Julie Burchill cited "striking bias against the state of Israel" as one of the reasons she left the paper for ''The Times''. Responding to these accusations, a ''Guardian'' editorial in 2002 condemned antisemitism and defended the paper's right to criticise the policies and actions of the Israeli government, arguing that those who view such criticism as inherently anti-Jewish are mistaken. Harriet Sherwood, then ''The Guardian'' foreign editor, later its Jerusalem correspondent, has also denied that ''The Guardian'' has an anti-Israel bias, saying that the paper aims to cover all viewpoints in the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the world's most enduring conflicts, beginning in the mid-20th century. Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, alongside other ef ...
. On 6 November 2011, Chris Elliott, ''The Guardian''s readers' editor, wrote that "''Guardian'' reporters, writers and editors must be more vigilant about the language they use when writing about Jews or Israel," citing recent cases where ''The Guardian'' received complaints regarding language chosen to describe Jews or Israel. Elliott noted that, over nine months, he upheld complaints regarding language in certain articles that were seen as anti-Semitic, revising the language and footnoting this change. ''The Guardian''s style guide section referred to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel in 2012. ''The Guardian'' later clarified: "In 1980, the Israeli Knesset enacted a law designating the city of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem, as the country's capital. In response, the UN security council issued resolution 478, censuring the "change in character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem" and calling on all member states with diplomatic missions in the city to withdraw. The UN has reaffirmed this position on several occasions, and almost every country now has its embassy in Tel Aviv. While it was therefore right to issue a correction to make clear Israel's designation of Jerusalem as its capital is not recognised by the international community, we accept that it is wrong to state that Tel Aviv – the country's financial and diplomatic centre – is the capital. The style guide has been amended accordingly." On 11 August 2014 the print edition of ''The Guardian'' published a pro-Israeli advocacy advert during the
2014 Israel–Gaza conflict The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge ( he, מִבְצָע צוּק אֵיתָן, translit=Miv'tza Tzuk Eitan, ), was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territories, Pale ...
featuring
Elie Wiesel Elie Wiesel (, born Eliezer Wiesel ''Eliezer Vizel''; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored Elie Wiesel b ...
, headed by the words "Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it's Hamas' turn." ''The Times'' had decided against running the ad, although it had already appeared in major American newspapers. One week later, Chris Elliott expressed the opinion that the newspaper should have rejected the language used in the advert and should have negotiated with the advertiser on this matter.


Clark County

In August 2004, for the US presidential election, the daily ''G2'' supplement launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark County, Ohio, an average-sized county in a swing state. Editor
Ian Katz Ian Alexander Katz (born 9 February 1968) is a British journalist and broadcasting executive who is currently Chief Content Officer at Channel 4, overseeing all editorial decision making and commissioning across Channel 4's linear channels, str ...
bought a voter list from the county for $25 and asked readers to write to people listed as undecided in the election, giving them an impression of the international view and the importance of voting against President George W. Bush. Katz admitted later that he did not believe Democrats who warned that the campaign would benefit Bush and not opponent John Kerry. The newspaper scrapped "Operation Clark County" on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of responses—nearly all of them outraged—to the campaign under the headline "Dear Limey assholes". Some commentators suggested that the public's dislike of the campaign contributed to Bush's victory in Clark County.


''Guardian America'' and ''Guardian US''

In 2007, the paper launched ''Guardian America'', an attempt to capitalise on its large online readership in the United States, which at the time stood at more than 5.9 million. The company hired former ''
American Prospect ''The American Prospect'' is a daily online and bimonthly print American political and public policy magazine dedicated to American modern liberalism and progressivism. Based in Washington, D.C., ''The American Prospect'' says it "is devoted to ...
'' editor, ''
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
'' magazine columnist and '' New York Review of Books'' writer Michael Tomasky to head the project and hire a staff of American reporters and web editors. The site featured news from ''The Guardian'' that was relevant to an American audience: coverage of US news and the Middle East, for example. Tomasky stepped down from his position as editor of ''Guardian America'' in February 2009, ceding editing and planning duties to other US and London staff. He retained his position as a columnist and blogger, taking the title editor-at-large. In October 2009, the company abandoned the ''Guardian America'' homepage, instead directing users to a US news index page on the main ''Guardian'' website. The following month, the company laid off six American employees, including a reporter, a multimedia producer and four web editors. The move came as ''Guardian News and Media'' opted to reconsider its US strategy amid a huge effort to cut costs across the company. In subsequent years, however, ''The Guardian'' has hired various commentators on US affairs including Ana Marie Cox, Michael Wolff, Naomi Wolf, Glenn Greenwald and George W. Bush's former speechwriter
Josh Treviño Josh is a masculine given name, frequently a diminutive (hypocorism) of the given names Joshua or Joseph, though since the 1970s, it has increasingly become a full name on its own. It may refer to: People A–J * "Josh", an early pseudonym of S ...
. Treviño's first blog post was an apology for a controversial tweet posted in June 2011 over the second Gaza flotilla, the controversy which had been revived by the appointment. '' Guardian US'' launched in September 2011, led by editor-in-chief Janine Gibson, which replaced the previous ''Guardian America'' service. After a period during which
Katharine Viner Katharine Sophie Viner (born January 1971)Katharine Vine"Dear diary ..." ''The Guardian'', 27 November 2004 is a British journalist and playwright. She became the first female editor-in-chief at ''The Guardian'' on 1 June 2015 succeeding Alan ...
served as the US editor-in-chief before taking charge of ''Guardian News and Media'' as a whole, Viner's former deputy, Lee Glendinning, was appointed to succeed her as head of the American operation at the beginning of June 2015.


Gagged from reporting Parliament

In October 2009, ''The Guardian'' reported that it was forbidden to report on a parliamentary matter – a question recorded in a Commons order paper, to be answered by a minister later that week. The newspaper noted that it was being "forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented—for the first time in memory—from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. The only fact ''The Guardian'' can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck." The paper further claimed that this case appears "to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the
1689 Bill of Rights The Bill of Rights 1689 is an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of the Parliament of England, which sets out certain basic civil rights and clarifies who would be next to inherit the Crown, and is seen as a crucial landmark in UK constitutional law, ...
". The only parliamentary question mentioning Carter-Ruck in the relevant period was by Paul Farrelly MP, in reference to legal action by
Barclays Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...
and Trafigura. The part of the question referencing Carter-Ruck relates to the latter company's September 2009 gagging order on the publication of a 2006 internal report into the
2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump The 2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump was a health crisis in Ivory Coast in which a ship registered in Panama, the ''Probo Koala'', chartered by the Singaporean-based oil and commodity shipping company Trafigura Beheer BV, offloaded toxic waste ...
scandal, which involved a class action case that the company only settled in September 2009 after ''The Guardian'' published some of the commodity trader's internal emails. The reporting injunction was lifted the next day, as Carter-Ruck withdrew it before ''The Guardian'' could challenge it in the High Court. Alan Rusbridger attributed the rapid back-down by Carter-Ruck to postings on Twitter, as did a BBC News Online article.


Edward Snowden leaks and intervention by the UK government

In June 2013, the newspaper broke news of the secret collection of
Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
telephone records held by Barack Obama's administration and subsequently revealed the existence of the PRISM surveillance program after it was leaked to the paper by former
NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...
contractor
Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...
. ''The Guardian'' said a DSMA-Notice had been sent to editors and journalists on 7 June after the first ''Guardian'' story about the Snowden documents. It said the DSMA-Notice was being used as an "attempt to censor coverage of surveillance tactics employed by intelligence agencies in the UK and US". The newspaper was subsequently contacted by the British government's Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, under instruction from Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who ordered that the hard drives containing the information be destroyed. ''The Guardian'' offices were then visited in July by agents from the UK's GCHQ, who supervised the destruction of the hard drives containing information acquired from Snowden. ''The Guardian'' said it had destroyed the hard drives to avoid threatened legal action by the UK government that could have stopped it from reporting on US and British government surveillance contained in the documents. In June 2014, '' The Register'' reported that the information the government sought to suppress by destroying the hard drives related to the location of a "beyond top secret" internet monitoring base in Seeb, Oman, and the close involvement of BT and Cable & Wireless in intercepting internet communications.
Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...
criticised the newspaper for not publishing the entirety of the content when it had the chance. Rusbridger had initially covered the Snowden documents without the government's supervision, but subsequently sought it, and established an ongoing relationship with the
Defence Ministry {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see American and British English spelling differences#-ce.2C -se, spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a g ...
. ''The Guardian'' coverage of Snowden later continued because the information had already been copied outside the United Kingdom, earning the newspaper a
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
. Rusbridger and subsequent chief editors would sit on the government's DSMA-notice board.


Manafort–Assange secret meetings

In a November 2018 ''Guardian'' article, Luke Harding and Dan Collyns cited anonymous sources which stated that Donald Trump's former campaign manager
Paul Manafort Paul John Manafort Jr. (; born April 1, 1949) is an American lobbyist, political consultant, and attorney. A long-time Republican Party campaign consultant, he chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016. Manafort served ...
held secret meetings with WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...
inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2013, 2015, and 2016. The name of a third author, Fernando Villavicencio, was removed from the online version of the story soon after publication. The title of the story was originally 'Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy'. A few hours after publication, 'sources say' was added to the title, and the meeting became an 'apparent meeting'. One reporter characterized the story, "If it's right, it might be the biggest get this year. If it's wrong, it might be the biggest gaffe." Manafort and Assange both denied ever having met with the latter threatening legal action against ''The Guardian''. Ecuador's London consul Fidel Narváez, who had worked at
Ecuador's embassy in London The Embassy of Ecuador in London is the diplomatic mission of Ecuador in the United Kingdom. It is headed by the ambassador of Ecuador to the United Kingdom. It is located in the Knightsbridge area of London, in the Royal Borough of Kensington an ...
from 2010 to July 2018, denied that Manafort's visits had happened.
Serge Halimi Serge Halimi (born 2 August 1955) is a French journalist working at '' Le Monde diplomatique'' since 1992. In March 2008 he became the editorial director. He is also the author of ''Le Grand Bond en Arrière''. Biography Serge Halimi was electe ...
said Harding had a personal grievance against Assange and noted that Manafort's name does not appear in the Ecuadorian embassy's visitors’ book and there were no pictures of Manafort entering or leaving "one of the most surveilled and filmed buildings on the planet".


Priti Patel cartoon

''The Guardian'' was accused of being "racist and misogynistic" after it published a cartoon depicting Home Secretary,
Priti Patel Priti Sushil Patel (born 29 March 1972) is a British politician who served as Home Secretary from 2019 to 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, she was Secretary of State for International Development from 2016 to 2017. Patel has been the Me ...
as a cow with a ring in its nose in an alleged reference to her
Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
faith, since cows are considered sacred in Hinduism.


WikiLeaks coverage

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, a former contributor to ''The Guardian'', has accused ''The Guardian'' of falsifying the words of WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...
in a report about the interview he gave to Italian newspaper ''La Repubblica.'' In '' The Intercept'', Greenwald wrote: "This article is about how those 'Guardian''false claims—fabrications, really—were spread all over the internet by journalists, causing hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to consume false news." ''The Guardian'' later amended its article about Assange. After publishing a story on 13 January 2017 claiming that WhatsApp had a "backdoor hatallows snooping on messages", more than 70 professional cryptographers signed on to an open letter calling for ''The Guardian'' to retract the article. On 13 June 2017, readers' editor Paul Chadwick released an article detailing the flawed reporting in the original January article, which was amended to remove references to a backdoor.


Ownership and finances

''The Guardian'' is part of the
Guardian Media Group Guardian Media Group plc (GMG) is a British-based mass media company owning various media operations including ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer''. The group is wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which exists to secure the financial and e ...
(GMG) of newspapers, radio stations and print media. GMG components include ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'', '' The Guardian Weekly'' and ''
TheGuardian.com TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and ''Guardian Unlimited'', is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'', ...
''. All were owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation existing between 1936 and 2008, which aimed to ensure the paper's
editorial independence Editorial independence is the freedom of editors to make decisions without interference from the owners of a publication. Editorial independence is tested, for instance, if a newspaper runs articles that may be unpopular with its advertising clien ...
in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it did not become vulnerable to takeovers by commercial media groups. At the beginning of October 2008, the Scott Trusts assets were transferred to a new limited company, The Scott Trust Limited, with the intention being that the original trust would be wound up. Dame Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust, reassured staff that the purposes of the new company remained the same as under the previous arrangements. ''The Guardian'' is the only British national daily to conduct (since 2003) an annual social, ethical and environmental
audit An audit is an "independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit oriented or not, irrespective of its size or legal form when such an examination is conducted with a view to express an opinion thereon.” Auditing ...
in which it examines, under the scrutiny of an independent external auditor, its own behaviour as a company. It is also the only British national daily newspaper to employ an internal ombudsman (called the "readers' editor") to handle complaints and corrections. ''The Guardian'' and its parent groups participate in
Project Syndicate Project Syndicate is an international media organization that publishes and syndicates commentary and analysis on a variety of global topics. All opinion pieces are published on the ''Project Syndicate'' website, but are also distributed to a wi ...
and intervened in 1995 to save the '' Mail & Guardian'' in South Africa; GMG sold the majority of its shares of the ''Mail & Guardian'' in 2002. ''The Guardian'' was consistently loss-making until 2019. The National Newspaper division of GMG, which also includes ''The Observer'', reported operating losses of £49.9 million in 2006, up from £18.6 million in 2005. The paper was therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group. The continual losses made by the National Newspaper division of the ''Guardian Media Group'' caused it to dispose of its Regional Media division by selling titles to competitor '' Trinity Mirror'' in March 2010. This included the flagship '' Manchester Evening News'', and severed the historic link between that paper and ''The Guardian''. The sale was in order to safeguard the future of ''The Guardian'' newspaper as is the intended purpose of the ''Scott Trust''. In June 2011 ''Guardian News and Media'' revealed increased annual losses of £33 million and announced that it was looking to focus on its online edition for news coverage, leaving the print edition to contain more comments and features. It was also speculated that ''The Guardian'' might become the first British national daily paper to be fully online. For the three years up to June 2012, the paper lost £100,000 a day, which prompted ''Intelligent Life'' to question whether ''The Guardian'' could survive. Between 2007 and 2014 ''The Guardian Media Group'' sold all their side businesses, of regional papers and online portals for classifieds and consolidated, into ''The Guardian'' as sole product. The sales let them acquire a capital stock of £838.3 million as of July 2014, supposed to guarantee the independence of the ''Guardian'' in perpetuity. In the first year, the paper made more losses than predicted, and in January 2016 the publishers announced, that ''The Guardian'' will cut 20 per cent of staff and costs within the next three years. The newspaper is rare in calling for direct contributions "to deliver the independent journalism the world needs." The Guardian Media Group's 2018 annual report (year ending 1 April 2018) indicated some significant changes occurring. Its digital (online) editions accounted for over 50% of group revenues by that time; the loss from news and media operations was £18.6 million, 52% lower than during the prior year (2017: £38.9 million). The Group had cut costs by £19.1 million, partly by switching its print edition to the tabloid format. The Guardian Media Group's owner, the Scott Trust Endowment Fund, reported that its value at the time was £1.01 billion (2017: £1.03 billion). In the following financial report (for the year 2018–2019), the group reported a profit (
EBITDA A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced , , or ) is a measure of a company's profitability of the operating business only, thus before any effects of indebtedness, stat ...
) of £0.8 million before exceptional items, thus breaking even in 2019. To be sustainable, the annual subsidy must fall within the £25m of interest returned on the investments from the Scott Trust Endowment Fund.


"Membership" subscription scheme

In 2014, ''The Guardian'' launched a membership scheme. The scheme aims to reduce the financial losses incurred by ''The Guardian'' without introducing a
paywall A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of ...
, thus maintaining open access to the website. Website readers can pay a monthly subscription, with three tiers available. As of 2018 this approach was considered successful, having brought more than 1 million subscriptions or donations, with the paper hoping to break even by April 2019.


Foundation funding

In 2016, the company established a U.S.-based philanthropic arm to raise money from individuals and organizations including think tanks and corporate foundations. The grants are focused by the donors on particular issues. By the following year, the organization had raised $1 million from the likes of
Pierre Omidyar Pierre Morad Omidyar (born Parviz Morad Omidyar, June 21, 1967) is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire. A technology entrepreneur, software engineer, and philanthropist, he is the founder of eBay, where he served as chairman from 199 ...
's Humanity United, the Skoll Foundation, and the
Conrad N. Hilton Foundation The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation is an American non-profit charitable foundation, established in 1944 by hotel entrepreneur Conrad Hilton. It remained relatively small until his death on January 3, 1979, when it was named the principal beneficiary ...
to finance reporting on topics including modern-day slavery and climate change. ''The Guardian'' has stated that it has secured $6 million "in multi-year funding commitments" thus far. The new project developed from funding relationships which the paper already had with the Ford,
Rockefeller Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to: People with the name Rockefeller fa ...
, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates had given the organization $5 million for its Global Development webpage. As of March 2020, the journal claims to be "the first major global news organisation to institute an outright ban on taking money from companies that extract fossil fuels."


Political stance and editorial opinion

Founded by textile traders and merchants, in its early years ''The Guardian'' had a reputation as "an organ of the middle class", or in the words of C. P. Scott's son Ted, "a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last". Associated at first with the
Little Circle The Little Circle was a Manchester-based group of Non-conformist Liberals, mostly members of the Portico Library, who held a common agenda with regards to political and social reform. The first group met from 1815 onwards to campaign for expande ...
and hence with classical liberalism as expressed by the Whigs and later by the Liberal Party, its political orientation underwent a decisive change after World War II, leading to a gradual alignment with
Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...
and the political left in general. The '' Scott Trust'' describes one of its "core purposes" to be "to secure the financial and editorial independence of the ''Guardian'' in perpetuity: as a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to its liberal tradition". The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion: a MORI poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80 per cent of ''Guardian'' readers were Labour Party voters; according to another MORI poll taken in 2005, 48 per cent of ''Guardian'' readers were Labour voters and 34 per cent Liberal Democrat voters. The term "''Guardian'' reader" can be used to imply a stereotype of
liberal Liberal or liberalism may refer to: Politics * a supporter of liberalism ** Liberalism by country * an adherent of a Liberal Party * Liberalism (international relations) * Sexually liberal feminism * Social liberalism Arts, entertainment and m ...
, left-wing or " politically correct" views. Although the paper is often considered to be "linked inextricably" to the Labour Party, three of ''The Guardian'' four leader writers joined the more centrist
Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties For ...
on its foundation in 1981. The paper was enthusiastic in its support for Tony Blair in his successful bid to lead the Labour Party, and to be elected Prime Minister. On 19 January 2003, two months before the
2003 invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...
, an ''Observer'' Editorial said: "Military intervention in the Middle East holds many dangers. But if we want a lasting peace it may be the only option. ... War with Iraq may yet not come, but, conscious of the potentially terrifying responsibility resting with the British Government, we find ourselves supporting the current commitment to a possible use of force." ''The Guardian'', however, opposed the war, along with the '' Daily Mirror'' and ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
''. Then ''Guardian'' features editor Ian Katz asserted in 2004 that "it is no secret we are a centre-left newspaper". In 2008, ''Guardian'' columnist Jackie Ashley said that editorial contributors were a mix of "right-of-centre libertarians, greens, Blairites, Brownites, Labourite but less enthusiastic Brownites, etc," and that the newspaper was "clearly left of centre and vaguely progressive". She also said that "you can be absolutely certain that come the next general election, ''The Guardian'' stance will not be dictated by the editor, still less any foreign proprietor (it helps that there isn't one) but will be the result of vigorous debate within the paper". The paper's comment and opinion pages, though often written by centre-left contributors such as
Polly Toynbee Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (; born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for ''The Guardian'' newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 19 ...
, have allowed some space for right-of-centre voices such as Sir Max Hastings and
Michael Gove Michael Andrew Gove (; born Graeme Andrew Logan, 26 August 1967) is a British politician serving as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations since 2021. He has been Member of Parli ...
. Since an editorial in 2000, ''The Guardian'' has favoured abolition of the British monarchy. "I write for the ''Guardian''," said Max Hastings in 2005, "because it is read by the new establishment," reflecting the paper's then-growing influence. In the run-up to the 2010 general election, following a meeting of the editorial staff, the paper declared its support for the Liberal Democrats, due in particular, to the party's stance on electoral reform. The paper suggested tactical voting to prevent a Conservative victory, given Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system. At the 2015 election, the paper switched its support to the Labour Party. The paper argued that Britain needed a new direction and Labour "speaks with more urgency than its rivals on social justice, standing up to predatory capitalism, on investment for growth, on reforming and strengthening the public realm, Britain's place in Europe and international development". Assistant Editor Michael White, in discussing media self-censorship in March 2011, says: "I have always sensed liberal, middle class ill-ease in going after stories about immigration, legal or otherwise, about welfare fraud or the less attractive tribal habits of the working class, which is more easily ignored altogether. Toffs, including royal ones, Christians, especially popes, governments of Israel, and U.S. Republicans are more straightforward targets." In a 2013 interview for NPR, ''The Guardian's'' Latin America correspondent Rory Carroll stated that many editors at ''The Guardian'' believed and continue to believe that they should support
Hugo Chávez Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republ ...
"because he was a standard-bearer for the left". In the
2015 United Kingdom general election The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 to elect 650 members to the House of Commons. It was the first and only general election held at the end of a Parliament under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Loca ...
it endorsed the Labour Party. In the 2015 Labour Party leadership election, ''The Guardian'' supported Blairite candidate Yvette Cooper and was critical of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, the successful candidate. These positions were criticised by the ''
Morning Star Morning Star, morning star, or Morningstar may refer to: Astronomy * Morning star, most commonly used as a name for the planet Venus when it appears in the east before sunrise ** See also Venus in culture * Morning star, a name for the star Siri ...
'', which accused ''The Guardian'' of being conservative. Although the majority of ''Guardian'' columnists were against Corbyn winning, Owen Jones,
Seumas Milne Seumas Patrick Charles Milne (born 5 September 1958)Winchester College: A Register. Edited by P.S.W.K. McClure and R.P. Stevens, on behalf of the Wardens and Fellows of Winchester College. 7th edition, 2014. pp. 582 (Short Half 1971 list heading) ...
, and George Monbiot wrote supportive articles about him. Despite the critical position of the paper in general, ''The Guardian'' endorsed the Labour Party whilst Corbyn was its leader in the
2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...
and
2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
general elections — although in both cases they endorsed a vote for opposition parties other than Labour, such as the Liberal Democrats and the
Scottish National Party The Scottish National Party (SNP; sco, Scots National Pairty, gd, Pàrtaidh Nàiseanta na h-Alba ) is a Scottish nationalist and social democratic political party in Scotland. The SNP supports and campaigns for Scottish independence from ...
in seats where Labour did not stand a chance. In the
2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country shoul ...
''The Guardian'' endorsed remaining in the EU, and in the
2019 European election The 2019 European Parliament election was held between 23 and 26 May 2019, the ninth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979. A total of 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) represent more than 512 million peopl ...
invited its readers to vote for pro-EU candidates, without endorsing specific parties.


Circulation and format

''The Guardian'' had a certified average daily circulation of 204,222 copies in December 2012 — a drop of 11.25 per cent in January 2012 — as compared to sales of 547,465 for ''The Daily Telegraph'', 396,041 for ''The Times'', and 78,082 for ''The Independent''.Audit Bureau of Circulations Ltd– abc.org.uk In March 2013, its average daily circulation had fallen to 193,586, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Circulation has continued to decline and stood at 161,091 in December 2016, a decline of 2.98 per cent year-on-year. In July 2021, the circulation was 105,134; later that year, the publishers stopped making circulation data public.


Publication history

The first edition was published on 5 May 1821, at which time ''The Guardian'' was a weekly, published on Saturdays and costing 7 d; the
stamp duty Stamp duty is a tax that is levied on single property purchases or documents (including, historically, the majority of legal documents such as cheques, receipts, military commissions, marriage licences and land transactions). A physical revenu ...
on newspapers (4d per sheet) forced the price up so high that it was uneconomic to publish more frequently. When the stamp duty was cut in 1836, ''The Guardian'' added a Wednesday edition and with the abolition of the tax in 1855 it became a daily paper costing 2d. In October 1952, the paper took the step of printing news on the front page, replacing the adverts that had hitherto filled that space. Then-editor A. P. Wadsworth wrote: "It is not a thing I like myself, but it seems to be accepted by all the newspaper pundits that it is preferable to be in fashion." Following the closure of the Anglican Church Newspaper, '' The Guardian'', in 1951, the paper dropped "Manchester" from its title in 1959, becoming simply ''The Guardian.'' In 1964 it moved to London, losing some of its regional agenda but continuing to be heavily subsidised by sales of the more downmarket but more profitable ''Manchester Evening News''. The financial position remained extremely poor into the 1970s; at one time it was in merger talks with ''The Times''. The paper consolidated its centre-left stance during the 1970s and 1980s. On 12 February 1988, ''The Guardian'' had a significant redesign; as well as improving the quality of its printers' ink, it also changed its masthead to a juxtaposition of an italic Garamond "''The''", with a bold Helvetica "Guardian", that remained in use until the 2005 redesign. In 1992, ''The Guardian'' relaunched its features section as ''G2'', a tabloid-format supplement. This innovation was widely copied by the other "quality" broadsheets and ultimately led to the rise of "compact" papers and ''The Guardian'' move to the
Berliner format Berliner, or "midi", is a newspaper format with pages normally measuring about . The Berliner format is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid/compact format; and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format. Origi ...
. In 1993 the paper declined to participate in the broadsheet price war started by Rupert Murdoch's ''The Times''. In June 1993, ''The Guardian'' bought ''The Observer'' from
Lonrho Lonrho is a London-based conglomerate that was established in 1998 as Lonrho Africa plc. It is engaged in multiple business sectors in Africa, mainly agribusiness, infrastructure, transport, hospitality and support services. History Lonrho ...
, thus gaining a serious Sunday sister newspaper with similar political views. Its international weekly edition is now titled ''The Guardian Weekly'', though it retained the title ''Manchester Guardian Weekly'' for some years after the home edition had moved to London. It includes sections from a number of other internationally significant newspapers of a somewhat left-of-centre inclination, including '' Le Monde'' and '' The Washington Post''. ''The Guardian Weekly'' was also linked to a website for expatriates, ''Guardian Abroad'', which was launched in 2007 but had been taken offline by 2012.


Moving to the Berliner paper format

''The Guardian'' is printed in full colour, and was the first newspaper in the UK to use the
Berliner Berliner is most often used to designate a citizen of Berlin, Germany Berliner may also refer to: People * Berliner (surname) Places * Berliner Lake, a lake in Minnesota, United States * Berliner Philharmonie, concert hall in Berlin, Germany ...
format for its main section, while producing sections and supplements in a range of page sizes including tabloid, approximately A4, and pocket-size (approximately A5). In 2004, ''The Guardian'' announced plans to change to a Berliner or "midi" format, similar to that used by ''
Die Tageszeitung ''Die Tageszeitung'' (, “The Daily Newspaper”), is counted as being one of modern Germany's most important newspapers and amongst the top seven. taz is stylized as ''die tageszeitung'' and commonly referred to as ''taz'', is a cooperative-own ...
'' in Germany, '' Le Monde'' in France and many other European papers. At 470×315 mm, this is slightly larger than a traditional
tabloid Tabloid may refer to: * Tabloid journalism, a type of journalism * Tabloid (newspaper format), a newspaper with compact page size ** Chinese tabloid * Tabloid (paper size), a North American paper size * Sopwith Tabloid, a biplane aircraft * ''Ta ...
. Planned for the autumn of 2005, this change followed moves by ''The Independent'' and ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' to start publishing in tabloid (or compact) format. On Thursday, 1 September 2005, ''The Guardian'' announced that it would launch the new format on Monday 12 September 2005. Sister Sunday newspaper ''The Observer'' also changed to this new format on 8 January 2006. The format switch was accompanied by a comprehensive redesign of the paper's look. On Friday, 9 September 2005, the newspaper unveiled its newly designed front page, which débuted on Monday 12 September 2005. Designed by Mark Porter, the new look includes a new
masthead Masthead may refer to: * Nameplate (publishing), the banner name on the front page of a newspaper or periodical (UK "masthead") * Masthead (American publishing), details of the owners, publisher, departments, officers, contributors and address d ...
for the newspaper, its first since 1988. A typeface family designed by Paul Barnes and
Christian Schwartz Christian Schwartz (born December 30, 1977 in Concord, New Hampshire, United States) is an American type designer. He has been awarded the German Design Award and the Prix Charles Peignot. Life A graduate of the Communication Design program at ...
was created for the new design. With just over 200 fonts, it was described as "one of the most ambitious custom type programs ever commissioned by a newspaper". Among the fonts is
Guardian Egyptian Guardian Egyptian is a slab-serif typeface commissioned by Mark Porter for the UK newspaper ''The Guardian'' and designed by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz between 2004 and 2005 and published by their company Commercial Type. It was an ...
, a slab serif that is used in various weights for both text and headlines, and is central to the redesign. The switch cost ''Guardian Newspapers'' £80 million and involved setting up new printing presses in east London and Manchester. This switch was necessary because, before ''The Guardian'' move, no printing presses in Britain could produce newspapers in the Berliner format. There were additional complications, as one of the paper's presses was part-owned by '' Telegraph Newspapers'' and '' Express Newspapers'', contracted to use the plant until 2009. Another press was shared with the ''Guardian Media Group's'' north-western tabloid local papers, which did not wish to switch to the Berliner format.


Reception

The new format was generally well received by ''Guardian'' readers, who were encouraged to provide feedback on the changes. The only controversy was over the dropping of the '' Doonesbury'' cartoon strip. The paper reported thousands of calls and emails complaining about its loss; within 24 hours the decision was reversed and the strip was reinstated the following week. ''G2'' supplement editor Ian Katz, who was responsible for dropping it, apologised in the editors' blog saying, "I'm sorry, once again, that I made you—and the hundreds of fellow fans who have called our helpline or mailed our comments' address—so cross." However, some readers were dissatisfied as the earlier deadline needed for the all-colour sports section meant coverage of late-finishing evening football matches became less satisfactory in the editions supplied to some parts of the country. The investment was rewarded with a circulation rise. In December 2005, the average daily sale stood at 380,693, nearly 6 per cent higher than the figure for December 2004. (However, as of December 2012, circulation had dropped to 204,222.) In 2006, the US-based Society for News Design chose ''The Guardian'' and Polish daily ''
Rzeczpospolita () is the official name of Poland and a traditional name for some of its predecessor states. It is a compound of "thing, matter" and "common", a calque of Latin ''rés pública'' ( "thing" + "public, common"), i.e. ''republic'', in Engli ...
'' as the world's best-designed newspapers—from among 389 entries from 44 countries.


Tabloid format since 2018

In June 2017,
Guardian Media Group Guardian Media Group plc (GMG) is a British-based mass media company owning various media operations including ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer''. The group is wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which exists to secure the financial and e ...
(GMG) announced that ''The Guardian'' and ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' would relaunch in tabloid format from early 2018. ''The Guardian'' confirmed the launch date for the new format to be 15 January 2018. GMG also signed a contract with '' Trinity Mirror'' – the publisher of the '' Daily Mirror'', ''
Sunday Mirror The ''Sunday Mirror'' is the Sunday sister paper of the ''Daily Mirror''. It began life in 1915 as the ''Sunday Pictorial'' and was renamed the ''Sunday Mirror'' in 1963. In 2016 it had an average weekly circulation of 620,861, dropping marke ...
'', and ''
Sunday People The ''Sunday People'' is a British tabloid Sunday newspaper. It was founded as ''The People'' on 16 October 1881. At one point owned by Odhams Press, The ''People'' was acquired along with Odhams by the Mirror Group in 1961, along with the ' ...
'' – to
outsource Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...
printing of ''The Guardian'' and ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
''. The format change is intended to help cut costs as it allows the paper to be printed by a wider array of presses, and outsourcing the printing to presses owned by Trinity Mirror is expected to save millions of pounds annually. The move is part of a three-year plan that includes cutting 300 jobs in an attempt to reduce losses and break even by 2019. The paper and ink are the same as previously and the font size is fractionally larger. An assessment of the response from readers in late April 2018 indicated that the new format had led to an increased number of subscriptions. The editors were working on changing aspects that had caused complaints from readers. In July 2018, the masthead of the new tabloid format was adjusted to a dark blue.


Online media

''The Guardian'' and its Sunday sibling ''The Observer'' publish all their news online, with free access both to current news and an archive of three million stories. A third of the site's hits are for items over a month old. As of May 2013, it was the most popular UK newspaper website with 8.2 million unique visitors per month, just ahead of ''
Mail Online MailOnline (also known as ''dailymail.co.uk'') is the website of the ''Daily Mail'', a newspaper in the United Kingdom, and of its sister paper ''The Mail on Sunday''. MailOnline is a division of dmg media, which is owned by Daily Mail and Gene ...
'' with 7.6 million unique monthly visitors. In April 2011, MediaWeek reported that ''The Guardian'' was the fifth most popular newspaper site in the world. Journalists use an analytics tool called Ophan, built entirely in-house, to measure website data around stories and audience. ''The Guardian'' launched an iOS mobile application for its content in 2009. An
Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
app followed in 2011. In 2018, the newspaper announced its apps and mobile website would be redesigned to coincide with its relaunch as a tabloid. The Comment is Free section features columns by the paper's journalists and regular commentators, as well as articles from guest writers, including readers' comments and responses below. The section includes all the opinion pieces published in the paper itself, as well as many others that only appear online. Censorship is exercised by Moderators who can ban posts – with no right of appeal – by those who they feel have overstepped the mark. ''The Guardian'' has taken what they call a very "open" stance in delivering news, and have launched an open platform for their content. This allows external developers to easily use ''Guardian'' content in external applications, and even to feed third-party content back into the ''Guardian'' network. ''The Guardian'' also had a number of talkboards that were noted for their mix of political discussion and whimsy until they were closed on Friday, 25 February 2011 after they had settled a libel action brought after months of harassment of a conservative party activist. They were spoofed in ''The Guardian'' own regular humorous Chatroom column in ''G2''. The spoof column purported to be excerpts from a chatroom on permachat.co.uk, a real URL that pointed to ''The Guardian'' talkboards. In August 2013, a webshow titled ''Thinkfluencer'' was launched by Guardian Multimedia in association with Arte. In 2004 the paper also launched a dating website, Guardian Soulmates. On 1 July 2020, Guardian Soulmates was closed down with the explanation: "It hasn’t been an easy decision to make, but the online dating world is a very different place to when we first launched online in July 2004. There are so many dating apps now, so many ways to meet people, which are often free and very quick."


Podcasts

The paper entered podcasting in 2005 with a twelve-part weekly podcast series by
Ricky Gervais Ricky Dene Gervais ( ; born 25 June 1961) is an English comedian, actor, writer, and director. He co-created, co-wrote, and acted in the British television sitcoms ''The Office'' (2001–2003), '' Extras'' (2005–2007), and '' An Idiot Abroad' ...
. In January 2006, Gervais' show topped the
iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
podcast chart having been downloaded by two million listeners worldwide, and was scheduled to be listed in the 2007 ''
Guinness Book of Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
'' as the most downloaded podcast. ''The Guardian'' now offers several regular podcasts made by its journalists. One of the most prominent is ''Today in Focus'', a daily news podcast hosted by
Anushka Asthana Anushka Asthana (born 1980) is a British Indian journalist and television presenter, who is currently deputy political editor of ITV News. Early life Asthana was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and raised in Stalybridge, Greater Mancheste ...
and launched on 1 November 2018. It was an immediate success and became one of the UK's most-downloaded podcasts.


GuardianFilms

In 2003, ''The Guardian'' started the film production company GuardianFilms, headed by journalist Maggie O'Kane. Much of the company's output is documentary made for television– and it has included
Salam Pax Salam Pax is the pseudonym of Salam Abdulmunem ( ar, سلام عبد المنعم), aka Salam al-Janabi ( ar, سلام الجنابي), under which he became the "most famous weblog, blogger in the world" during and after the 2003 invasion of Ira ...
's ''
Baghdad Blogger Salam Pax is the pseudonym of Salam Abdulmunem ( ar, سلام عبد المنعم), aka Salam al-Janabi ( ar, سلام الجنابي), under which he became the "most famous blogger in the world" during and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Along ...
'' for
BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...
's daily flagship '' Newsnight'', some of which have been shown in compilations by '' CNN International'', ''Sex on the Streets'' and ''Spiked'', both made for the UK's Channel 4 television. GuardianFilms has received several broadcasting awards. In addition to two Amnesty International Media Awards in 2004 and 2005, ''The Baghdad Blogger: Salam Pax'' won a Royal Television Society Award in 2005. ''Baghdad: A Doctor's Story'' won an Emmy Award for Best International Current Affairs film in 2007. In 2008, photojournalist Sean Smith's ''Inside the Surge'' won the Royal Television Society award for best international news film – the first time a newspaper has won such an award. The same year, ''The Guardian''
Katine Katine is a sub-county in the Soroti District of Uganda. It contains 66 villages, one of which is also called Katine. Since October 2007, the sub-county has been the focus of a three-year aid programme, undertaken by AMREF, with funding from Barc ...
website was awarded for its outstanding new media output at the One World Media awards. Again in 2008, GuardianFilms' undercover video report revealing vote rigging by Robert Mugabe's ZANU–PF party during the 2007 Zimbabwe election won best news programme of the year at the Broadcast Awards.


References in popular culture

The paper's nickname ' (sometimes abbreviated as "Graun") originated with the satirical magazine ''
Private Eye ''Private Eye'' is a British fortnightly satire, satirical and current affairs (news format), current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely r ...
''. This
anagram An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...
played on ''The Guardian''s early reputation for frequent
typographical error A typographical error (often shortened to typo), also called a misprint, is a mistake (such as a spelling mistake) made in the typing of printed (or electronic) material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual type-setting (typography). ...
s, including misspelling its own name as ''The ''. The first issue of the newspaper contained a number of errors, including a notification that there would soon be some goods sold at ' instead of ''auction''. Fewer typographical errors are seen in the paper since the end of
hot-metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a ...
. One ''Guardian'' writer, Keith Devlin, suggested that the high number of observed misprints was due more to the quality of the readership than the misprints' greater frequency. The newspaper was printed in Manchester until 1961 and the fact that the prints sent to London by train were the early, more error-prone, prints may have contributed to this image as well. When John Cole was appointed news editor by
Alastair Hetherington Hector Alastair Hetherington (31 October 1919 – 3 October 1999) was a British journalist, newspaper editor and academic. For nearly twenty years he was the editor of ''The Guardian'', and is regarded as one of the leading editors of the secon ...
in 1963, he sharpened the paper's comparatively "amateurish" setup. Employees of ''The Guardian'' and sister paper ''The Observer'' have been depicted in the films '' The Fifth Estate'' (2013), ''
Snowden Snowden may refer to: * Snowden (surname), a given name and a family name People * Edward Snowden, former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 Music * Snowden ...
'' (2016) and '' Official Secrets'' (2019), while Paddy Considine played a fictional ''Guardian'' journalist in the film ''
The Bourne Ultimatum ''The Bourne Ultimatum'' is the third Jason Bourne novel written by Robert Ludlum and a sequel to ''The Bourne Supremacy'' (1986). First published in 1990, it was the last Bourne novel to be written by Ludlum himself. Eric Van Lustbader wrote a ...
'' (2007).


Awards


Received

''The Guardian'' has been awarded the National Newspaper of the Year in 1998, 2005, 2010 and 2013 by the British Press Awards, and Front Page of the Year in 2002 ("A declaration of war", 12 September 2001). It was also co-winner of the World's Best-designed Newspaper as awarded by the Society for News Design (2005, 2007, 2013, 2014). ''Guardian'' journalists have won a range of British Press Awards, including: * Reporter of the Year ( Nick Davies, 2000; Paul Lewis, 2010;'' Press Gazette''
Roll of Honour
, accessed 24 July 2011
Rob Evans & Paul Lewis, 2014); * Foreign Reporter of the Year (
James Meek James Meek FRSE (1742–1810) (or ''Meik'') was Minister of Cambuslang from 1774 until his death. He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1795, but is most remembered as the model Enlightenment cleric who wrote ...
, 2004; Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, 2008); * Scoop of the Year (
Milly Dowler Milly is a feminine given name, sometimes used as a short form (hypocorism) of Mildred, Amelia, Emily, etc. It may refer to: People * Milly Alcock (born 2000), Australian actress * Milly Babalanda (born 1970), Ugandan politician * Milly Bern ...
phone hacked, 2012) * Young Journalist of the Year (
Emma Brockes Emma Brockes (born 1975) is a British author and a contributor to ''The Guardian'' and ''The New York Times''. She lives in New York. Biography The daughter of a South-African-born mother,Emma Brockes"My mother's secret past" extract from ''She ...
, 2001;"Visiting Time - Context - The Author: Emma Brockes"
British Council
Patrick Kingsley Sir Patrick Graham Toler Kingsley (12 May 1908 – 24 August 1999) served the Duchy of Cornwall for more than 40 years. Kingsley was born in Calcutta, Bengal, and educated at Winchester College where he played cricket for the school and ...
, 2013); * Columnist of the Year (
Polly Toynbee Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (; born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for ''The Guardian'' newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 19 ...
, 2007; Charlie Brooker, 2009); * Critic of the Year (
Marina O'Loughlin Marina O'Loughlin is a British journalist, writer and restaurant critic. She was the regular weekly restaurant reviewer in the London ''Metro (British newspaper), Metro'' from 2006 to 2012, before moving to ''The Guardian'', where she took over ...
, 2015); * Feature Writer of the Year (
Emma Brockes Emma Brockes (born 1975) is a British author and a contributor to ''The Guardian'' and ''The New York Times''. She lives in New York. Biography The daughter of a South-African-born mother,Emma Brockes"My mother's secret past" extract from ''She ...
, 2002; Tanya Gold, 2009; Amelia Gentleman, 2010); * Cartoonist of the Year ( Steve Bell, 2003); * Political Journalist of the Year ( Patrick Wintour, 2006;
Andrew Sparrow Andrew Sparrow is a British journalist and member of the Lobby – the political journalists with privileged access to the Members' Lobby of the House of Commons. He writes a live blog for ''The Guardian'', for which he was nominated for the Orwe ...
, 2010); * Science & Health Journalist of the Year (Sarah Boseley, 2016); * Business & Finance Journalist of the Year (Ian Griffiths, 2005; Simon Goodley, 2014); * Interviewer of the Year (
Decca Aitkenhead Jessica "Decca" Aitkenhead (born 1971) is an English journalist, writer and broadcaster. Early life and education Aitkenhead's family lived in Wiltshire when she was born; she has three older brothers. Her father was a teacher in Bristol befo ...
, 2008); * Sports Reporter of the Year (David Lacey, 2002); * Sports Photographer of the Year (Tom Jenkins, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2015); * Website of the Year (guardian.com/uk, 1999, 2001, 2007, 2008, 2015, 2020); * Digital Journalist of the Year (Dan Milmo, 2001; Sean Smith, 2008; Dave Hill, 2009) * Supplement of the Year (''Guardian's Guides to...'', 2007; ''Weekend Magazine'', 2015) * Special Supplement of the Year (''World Cup 2010 Guide'', 2010) Other awards include: *
Bevins Prize The Bevins Prize is a British award recognising outstanding investigative journalism Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corrupti ...
for investigative journalism ( Paul Lewis, 2010); * Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism ( Nick Davies, 1999;
Chris McGreal Chris McGreal is a reporter for ''The Guardian''. He is the author of ''American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts'' published by Public Affairs in the US and Guardian Faber in the UK. Career McGreal is a foreign correspondent for ''Th ...
, 2003; Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, 2005; Ian Cobain, 2009). The ''Guardian, Observer'' and its journalists have also won numerous accolades at the British Sports Journalism Awards: * Sports Writer of the Year (
Daniel Taylor Daniel, Dan, or Danny Taylor may refer to: Sportspeople * Dan Taylor (shot putter) (born 1982), American shot putter * Dan Taylor (cricketer) (1887–1957), South African cricketer * Dan Taylor (footballer, born 1993), English footballer * Dan Tayl ...
, 2017) *Sports News Reporter of the Year (
David Conn David Conn is a sports journalist who writes for ''The Guardian''. He attended Bury Grammar School before studying English Literature & Politics at the University of York. He has written four books. Three of them, ''The Football Business: Fa ...
, 2009, 2014) *Football Journalist of the Year (Daniel Taylor, 2015, 2016, 2017) *Sports Interviewer of the Year ( Donald McRae, 2009, 2011) *Diarist of the Year (David Hills, 2009) * Sports Feature Writer of the Year (Donald McRae, 2017, 2018) *Specialist Correspondent of the Year ( Sean Ingle, 2016, 2017) *Scoop of the Year (Daniel Taylor 2016;
Martha Kelner Martha Kelner (born ) is a British sport reporter, and is the daughter of Martin Kelner, also a sports reporter. She is currently working for Sky News. Kelner has reported a number of high-profile stories, including doping in Russia, allegations ...
and Sean Ingle, 2017) *Sports Newspaper of the Year (2017) *Sports Website of the Year (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) *Sports Journalists' Association Sports Portfolio of the Year (Tom Jenkins, 2011) The ''guardian.co.uk'' website won the Best Newspaper category three years running in 2005, 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards, beating (in 2005) '' The New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', '' The Wall Street Journal'' and '' Variety''. It has been the winner for six years in a row of the British Press Awards for Best Electronic Daily Newspaper. The site won an ''
Eppy The EPPY Awards are a premier accolade for media-affiliated websites, presented by ''Editor & Publisher ''Editor & Publisher'' (''E&P'') is an American monthly trade news magazine covering the newspaper industry. Published since 1901, ''Editor ...
'' award from the US-based magazine ''Editor & Publisher'' in 2000 for the best-designed newspaper online service. In 2007, the newspaper was ranked first in a study on transparency that analysed 25 mainstream English-language media vehicles, which was conducted by the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda of the University of Maryland. It scored 3.8 out of a possible 4.0. ''The Guardian'' and ''The Washington Post'' shared the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting for their coverage of the NSA's and GCHQ's worldwide electronic surveillance program and the document leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden.


Given

''The Guardian'' is the sponsor of two major literary awards: The '' Guardian First Book Award'', established in 1999 as a successor to the ''
Guardian Fiction Award The Guardian Fiction Prize was a literary award sponsored by ''The Guardian'' newspaper. Founded in 1965, it recognized one fiction book per year written by a British or Commonwealth writer and published in the United Kingdom. The award ran for 33 ...
'', which had run since 1965, and the ''
Guardian Children's Fiction Prize The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award was a literary award that annual recognised one fiction book written for children or young adults (at least age eight) and published in the United Kingdom. It was conferred upon the author ...
'', founded in 1967. In recent years the newspaper has also sponsored the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye. The annual Guardian Student Media Awards, founded in 1999, recognise excellence in journalism and design of British university and college student newspapers, magazines and websites. In memory of Paul Foot, who died in 2004, ''The Guardian'' and ''Private Eye'' jointly set up the Paul Foot Award, with an annual £10,000 prize fund, for investigative or campaigning journalism. The newspaper produces ''The Guardian'' 100 Best Footballers In The World. Since 2018 it has also co-produced the female equivalent, The 100 Best Female Footballers In The World. In 2016, ''The Guardian'' began awarding an annual Footballer of the Year award, given to a footballer regardless of gender "who has done something truly remarkable, whether by overcoming adversity, helping others or setting a sporting example by acting with exceptional honesty."


Best books lists

* ''The Guardians 100 best novels is a list of the best English-language novels as selected by Robert McCrum. * ''The Guardians 100 greatest non-fiction book list has come out in 2011 and in 2017, as selected by Robert McCrum.


Editors


Notable regular contributors (past and present)

Columnists and journalists: * David Aaronovitch * James Agate * Ian Aitken *
Decca Aitkenhead Jessica "Decca" Aitkenhead (born 1971) is an English journalist, writer and broadcaster. Early life and education Aitkenhead's family lived in Wiltshire when she was born; she has three older brothers. Her father was a teacher in Bristol befo ...
* Brian Aldiss * Tariq Ali *
Araucaria ''Araucaria'' (; original pronunciation: .ɾawˈka. ɾja is a genus of evergreen Conifer, coniferous trees in the family Araucariaceae. There are 20 extant taxon, extant species in New Caledonia (where 14 species are endemism, ende ...
* John Arlott *
Mark Arnold-Forster Mark Arnold-Forster, Distinguished Service Order, DSO, Distinguished Service Cross (UK), DSC (16 April 1920 – 25 December 1981) was an England, English journalist and author. He is best remembered for his book ''The World at War'', which acc ...
* Jackie Ashley *
Dilpazier Aslam Dilpazier Aslam (born 1978 in Yorkshire) is a former trainee journalist with ''The Guardian''. He came to public attention in July 2005 when he lost his position with the newspaper after being named as a member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir ...
*
Harriet Baber Harriet Baber (born January 6, 1950) is a professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego. She holds a Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University, 1980. Her research interests are in analytic metaphysics, philosophical theology, feminism and philos ...
*
Nancy Banks-Smith Nancy Banks-Smith (born 1929) is a British television and radio critic, who spent most of her career writing for ''The Guardian''. Life and career Born in Manchester and raised in a pub, she was educated at Roedean School. Banks-Smith began her ...
* Leonard Barden *
Laura Barton Laura Barton (born 1977) is an English journalist and writer. She writes mainly for ''The Guardian'', and wrote a novel, ''Twenty-One Locks'', published in 2010. Biography Barton was born in and grew up in the village of Newburgh, Lancashire ...
* Catherine Bennett *
Marcel Berlins Marcel Berlins (30 October 1941 – 31 July 2019) was a French-born lawyer, legal commentator, author, broadcaster and columnist. He was best known for his work in the United Kingdom, writing for British national newspapers ''The Times'' and ''T ...
* Michael Billington * Heston Blumenthal * Sidney Blumenthal * Boutros Boutros-Ghali * Frankie Boyle * Mark Boyle *
Lloyd Bradley Lloyd Bradley (born 21 January 1955) is a British music journalist and author. Biography Born in London to recent immigrants from St Kitts, Bradley discovered Jamaican music during his teenage years, while going out in the North London-based s ...
*
Russell Brand Russell Edward Brand (born 4 June 1975) is an English comedian and actor known for his flamboyant, loquacious style and manner. Brand has received three British Comedy Awards: Best Newcomer (2006), Best Live Stand-Up (2008), and the award for ...
*
Emma Brockes Emma Brockes (born 1975) is a British author and a contributor to ''The Guardian'' and ''The New York Times''. She lives in New York. Biography The daughter of a South-African-born mother,Emma Brockes"My mother's secret past" extract from ''She ...
* Charlie Brooker *
Thom Brooks Thomas "Thom" Brooks, (born 14 October 1973) is an American-British political philosopher and legal scholar. He has been professor of Law and Government at Durham University since 2014, the Dean of Durham Law School since 2016. He was previousl ...
* Guy Browning *
Alex Brummer Alex Brummer (born 25 May 1949) is an English economics commentator, working as a journalist, editor, and author. He has been the city editor of the ''Daily Mail'' (London) since May 2000, where he writes a daily column on economics and finance ...
* Inayat Bunglawala * Madeleine Bunting * Julie Burchill * Simon Callow *
James Cameron James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker. A major figure in the post-New Hollywood era, he is considered one of the industry's most innovative filmmakers, regularly pushing the boundaries of cinematic capability w ...
* Duncan Campbell * Neville Cardus * Alexander Chancellor *
Kira Cochrane Kira Cochrane (; born 1977) is a British journalist and novelist. She is the Head of Features at ''The Guardian,'' and worked previously as Head of Opinion. Cochrane is an advocate for women's rights, as well as an active participant in fourth ...
*
Mark Cocker Mark Cocker (born 1959) is a British author and naturalist. He lives with his wife, Mary Muir, and two daughters in Claxton, Norfolk; the countryside around Claxton is a theme for two of his twelve books. Cocker has written extensively for ...
* Alistair Cooke *
G. D. H. Cole George Douglas Howard Cole (25 September 1889 – 14 January 1959) was an English political theorist, economist, and historian. As a believer in common ownership of the means of production, he theorised guild socialism (production organised ...
* John Cole *
Rosalind Coward Rosalind Coward is a journalist and writer. She is an Emeritus Professor of journalism at Roehampton University, and a former member of the board of Greenpeace UK (2005–12). Education Coward gained her first degree in English literature fr ...
*
Gavyn Davies Gavyn Davies, OBE (born 27 November 1950) is a former Goldman Sachs partner who was the chairman of the BBC from 2001 until 2004. On 28 January 2004 he announced that he was resigning his BBC post following the publication of the Hutton Inqui ...
* Robin Denselow * Beth Ditto *
Tim Dowling Robert Timothy Dowling (; born June 1963) is an American journalist and author who writes a weekly column in ''The Guardian'' about his life with his family in London. Career Dowling worked in data entry for a films database before he became a fr ...
* Terry Eagleton * Larry Elliott *
Matthew Engel Matthew Lewis Engel (born 11 June 1951) is a British writer, journalist and editor. Early life and education Engel was born in Northampton, son of solicitor Max David Engel (1912-2005) and Betty Ruth (née Lesser). His grandfather had escaped anti ...
* Edzard Ernst * Harold Evans *
Evelyn Flinders Evelyn Betty Flinders (21 March 1910 – 31 October 1997) was a British comics artist who worked in girls' comics. She entered the Hornsey School of Art at the age of fifteen, and in 1928 got her first job with the Amalgamated Press, drawing for ...
* Paul Foot * Liz Forgan *
Brian J. Ford Brian J. Ford HonFLS HonFRMS (born 1939 in Corsham, Wiltshire) is an independent research biologist, author, and lecturer, who publishes on scientific issues for the general public. He has also been a television personality for more than 40 ...
*
Dawn Foster Dawn Hayley Foster (12 September 1986 – 9 July 2021) was an Irish-British journalist, broadcaster, and author writing predominantly on social affairs, politics, economics and women's rights. Foster held staff writer positions at ''Inside Housi ...
*
Ebenezer Fox Ebenezer Fox (died 1886), was an English journalist who later settled in Australia and New Zealand. Fox was born in England and practised his profession in the north until he had nearly attained middle age. For several years he was a chief repo ...
* Michael Frayn *
Jonathan Freedland Jonathan Saul Freedland (born 25 February 1967) is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for ''The Guardian''. He presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series ''The Long View''. Freedland also writes thrillers, mainly under the ...
* Hadley Freeman * Timothy Garton Ash * Tanya Gold * Ben Goldacre * Victor Gollancz * Richard Gott *
A. C. Grayling Anthony Clifford Grayling (; born 3 April 1949) is a British philosopher and author. He was born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and spent most of his childhood there and in Nyasaland (now Malawi). In 2011 he founded and became the first Mast ...
* Roy Greenslade * Germaine Greer *
A. Harry Griffin Arthur Harry Griffin (15 January 1911 – 9 July 2004) was a British journalist and mountaineer. He is particularly remembered for his evocative recording, in his writing, of rock-climbing in the Lake District in the inter-war years, especially a ...
*
Ben Hammersley Ben Hammersley FRSA FRGS (born 3 April 1976) is a British technologist, strategic foresight consultant, futurist, keynote speaker, broadcaster and systems developer, based in New York City. He specializes on Adaptive Futurism and Cognitive Risk ...
* Clifford Harper * Max Hastings * Roy Hattersley *
David Hencke David Hencke ( ) is a British investigative journalist and writer, named "Political Journalist of the Year" at the 2012 British Press Awards. Career Hencke began as a student journalist in 1965 at Warwick University as editor of its first univer ...
*
Georgina Henry Georgina Clare Henry (8 June 1960 – 7 February 2014)Alan Rusbridger"Obituary: Georgina Henry" ''The Guardian'', 7 February 2014. was a British journalist. Associated with ''The Guardian'' newspaper for 25 years from 1989 until her death in 201 ...
* Isabel Hilton *
L. T. Hobhouse Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, FBA (8 September 1864 – 21 June 1929) was an English liberal political theorist and sociologist, who has been considered one of the leading and earliest proponents of social liberalism. His works, culminating in ...
*
J. A. Hobson John Atkinson Hobson (6 July 1858 – 1 April 1940) was an English economist and social scientist. Hobson is best known for his writing on imperialism, which influenced Vladimir Lenin, and his theory of underconsumption. His principal and ea ...
*
Tom Hodgkinson Tom Hodgkinson (born 1968) is a British writer and the editor of '' The Idler'' magazine, which he established in 1993 with his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. His philosophy, in his published books and articles, is of a relaxed approach to life, ...
* Will Hodgkinson * Simon Hoggart *
Stewart Holden Stewart Holden (born 5 September 1979) is a competitive Scrabble player from the United Kingdom. Holden is originally from Oxford but has resided near Belfast, Northern Ireland since 2008. He represented England at the World Scrabble Championsh ...
*
Clare Hollingworth Clare Hollingworth (10 October 1911 – 10 January 2017) was an English journalist and author. She was the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II, described as "the scoop of the century". As a rookie reporter for ''The ...
*
Will Hutton William Nicolas Hutton (born 21 May 1950) is a British journalist. As of 2022, he writes a regular column for ''The Observer'', co-chairs the Purposeful Company, and is the president-designate of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is the chair ...
*
Marina Hyde Marina Hyde (born Marina Elizabeth Catherine Dudley-Williams; 13 May 1974) is an English journalist. She joined ''The Guardian'' newspaper in 2000 and, as one of the newspaper's columnists, writes three articles each week on current affairs, cele ...
* C. L. R. James *
Erwin James Erwin James Monahan (born 1957) is a columnist and convicted murderer who has written for ''The Guardian'' since 1998, writing under the name "Erwin James" whilst still incarcerated. He was released in August 2004 having served 20 years of a life ...
(pseudonym) *
Waldemar Januszczak Waldemar Januszczak (born 12 January 1954) is an English art critic and television documentary producer and presenter. Formerly the art critic of ''The Guardian'', he took the same role at ''The Sunday Times'' in 1992, and has twice won the Cr ...
*
Simon Jenkins Sir Simon David Jenkins (born 10 June 1943) is a British author, a newspaper columnist and editor. He was editor of the ''Evening Standard'' from 1976 to 1978 and of ''The Times'' from 1990 to 1992. Jenkins chaired the National Trust from 20 ...
* Stanley Johnson * Owen Jones * Alex Kapranos * Saeed Kamali Dehghan *
Victor Keegan __NOTOC__ Victor Keegan (born 1940) is a British journalist and author focusing on economics and technology issues. Born in London, he attended Wimbledon College and Brasenose College, Oxford. After which, he spent most of his working life at ''T ...
*
Martin Kelner Martin Barry Kelner is a British journalist, author, comedian, singer, actor and TV presenter, whose primary career is in radio presenting. He has spent over 40 years hosting radio shows, mostly for the BBC, in particular Radio Leeds. He has be ...
*
Emma Kennedy Emma Kennedy (born Elizabeth Emma Williams on 28 May 1967) is an English actress, lawyer, comedian, and travel writer, comedian, television presenter and author. Early life and education The daughter of teachers,
*
Maev Kennedy Maev Kennedy (born 1954) is an Irish journalist. She has worked as a staff news writer for ''The Guardian'' and writes regularly for the ''Museums Journal''. At ''The Guardian'', she edited the diary column and been the arts and heritage corresp ...
*
Martin Kettle Martin James Kettle (born 7 September 1949) is a British journalist and author. The son of two prominent communist activists, Arnold Kettle (best remembered as a literary critic; 1916–1986) and Margot Kettle (née Gale; 1916–1995), he was ed ...
* Arthur Koestler *
Aleks Krotoski Aleksandra Krystyna Theresa Krotoski (born October 22, 1974) is a broadcaster, journalist and social psychologist based in the United States who writes and broadcasts about technology and interactivity. She currently presents the BBC Radio 4 ser ...
*
Mark Lawson Mark Gerard Lawson is an English journalist, broadcaster and author. Specialising in culture and the arts, he is best known for presenting the flagship BBC Radio 4 arts programme ''Front Row (radio programme), Front Row'' between 1998 and 2014. ...
* David Leigh * Rod Liddle *
Sue Limb Sue Limb (born 1946, Hitchin, Hertfordshire) is a British writer and broadcaster. Biography Limb was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. She studied Elizabethan literature, Elizabethan lyric poetry at Newnham College, Cambridge and then trained in e ...
(as ''Dulcie Domum'') *
Maureen Lipman Dame Maureen Diane Lipman (born 10 May 1946) is an English actress, writer and comedian. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and her stage work has included appearances with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakesp ...
*
Joris Luyendijk Joris Luyendijk (; born 30 December 1971) is a Dutch non-fiction author, anthropologist, news correspondent, and TV interviewer. Biography Joris Luyendijk was born on 30 December 1971 in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He lived in Hilversum from t ...
* John Maddox * Derek Malcolm *
Johnjoe McFadden Johnjoe McFadden (born 17 May 1956) is an Anglo-Irish scientist, academic and writer. He is Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom. Life McFadden was born in Donegal, Ireland but raised in the UK. He holds j ...
*
Dan McDougall Dan McDougall is an international journalist. He is the current Africa Correspondent for ''The Sunday Times'' of London. He has reported from over 126 countries and war zones including Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistani Kashmir, Northern Yeme ...
* Neil McIntosh *
David McKie David McKie (born 1935) is a British journalist and historian. He was deputy editor of ''The Guardian'' and continued to write a weekly column for that paper until 4 October 2007, called "Elsewhere". Until 10 September 2005, he also wrote a sec ...
*
Gareth McLean Gareth McLean (born c.1975) is a Scottish journalist and screenwriter who has written for ''The Guardian'' newspaper and on soap operas for the '' Radio Times'' magazine. McLean graduated with an MA (Hons) in English from the University of Aberd ...
* Anna Minton * David Mitchell * George Monbiot *
C. E. Montague Charles Edward Montague (1 January 1867 – 28 May 1928) was an English journalist, known also as a writer of novels and essays. Biography Montague was born and brought up in London, the son of an Irish Roman Catholic priest who had left his ...
* Suzanne Moore * Malcolm Muggeridge * James Naughtie * Richard Norton-Taylor * Maggie O'Kane *
Susie Orbach Susie Orbach (born 6 November 1946) is a British psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic. Her first book, ''Fat is a Feminist Issue'', analysed the psychology of dieting and over-eating in women, and she has campaigned against m ...
* Greg Palast * David Pallister * Michael Parkinson * '
Salam Pax Salam Pax is the pseudonym of Salam Abdulmunem ( ar, سلام عبد المنعم), aka Salam al-Janabi ( ar, سلام الجنابي), under which he became the "most famous weblog, blogger in the world" during and after the 2003 invasion of Ira ...
' *
Jim Perrin Jim Perrin (born 30 March 1947), is an English rock climber and travel writer. Biography Jim Perrin was born Ernest James Perrin in Manchester, England, to a family of Huguenot descent. His father played rugby league for Salford in the late 1930 ...
*
Melanie Phillips Melanie Phillips (born 4 June 1951) is a British journalist, author, and public commentator. She began her career writing for ''The Guardian'' and ''New Statesman''. During the 1990s, she came to identify with ideas more associated with the righ ...
* Helen Pidd * John Pilger * Anna Politkovskaya *
Peter Preston Peter John Preston (23 May 1938 – 6 January 2018) was a British journalist and author. He was editor of ''The Guardian'' for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. Early life Peter Preston was born in Barrow upon Soar, Leicestershire, the son of J ...
*
Tim Radford Tim Radford (born 1940) is a British–New Zealand freelance journalist, born in New Zealand in 1940 and educated at Sacred Heart College, Auckland. At 16, he joined ''The New Zealand Herald'' as a reporter. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1 ...
*
Arthur Ransome Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of childre ...
* Adam Raphael * Andrew Rawnsley * Brian Redhead *
James H Reeve James Hengist Reeve, born 25 June 1950, is an English People, English broadcaster, journalist, raconteur and radio phone-in host based in the Manchester area. Reeve has hosted shows on Greatest Hits Radio Greater Manchester, Piccadilly Radio, BBC ...
* Gillian Reynolds * Simon Rogers * Jon Ronson *
Rhik Samadder Rhik Samadder is a British journalist, writer, broadcaster and actor. Childhood and education He was born in Lewisham on 25 December 1980, the son of parents who immigrated from India the previous year. He did a degree in philosophy at Univer ...
* Ash Sarkar * Jack Schofield * Mike Selvey * Norman Shrapnel *
Frank Sidebottom Frank or Franks may refer to: People * Frank (given name) * Frank (surname) * Franks (surname) * Franks, a medieval Germanic people * Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang Cur ...
* Michael Simkins *
Posy Simmonds Rosemary Elizabeth "Posy" Simmonds MBE, FRSL (born 9 August 1945) is a British newspaper cartoonist, and writer and illustrator of both children's books and graphic novels. She is best known for her long association with ''The Guardian'', for wh ...
* Howard Spring *
Jean Stead Jean Bourne (30 May 1926 – 2 December 2016) Early life and education Jean Bourne nee Stead was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, 30 May 1926. Career Stead trained as a reporter on ''The Yorkshire Post'', working as a reporter for 10 year ...
* David Steel *
Jonathan Steele Jonathan Steele may refer to: *Jonathan Steele (journalist), British journalist and author * Jonathan Steele (comics), the comic book series * Jonny Steele, footballer See also *Jon Steel Jon Steel , full name Jonathan Steel (born 14 March 19 ...
* Mary Stott *
Allegra Stratton Allegra Elizabeth Jane Stratton (born 10 April 1980) is a British former political aide, journalist, and writer who served as Downing Street Press Secretary under Boris Johnson from November 2020 to April 2021. Stratton worked for ''The Guardi ...
*
John Sutherland John Sutherland may refer to: Politicians * John Sutherland (New South Wales politician) (1816–1889), member of the NSW Legislative Assembly and Council * John Sutherland (Canadian senator) (1821–1899), Canadian Senator from Manitoba * John S ...
*
R. H. Tawney Richard Henry Tawney (30 November 1880 – 16 January 1962) was an English economic historian, social critic, ethical socialist,Noel W. Thompson. ''Political economy and the Labour Party: the economics of democratic socialism, 1884-2005''. 2nd e ...
* A. J. P. Taylor *
Simon Tisdall Simon Tisdall (born 1953) is a columnist for ''The Guardian'' newspaper and an assistant editor of the publication. Early life Tisdall was born in Manchester and educated at Holland Park School in Kensington, one of the first comprehensives. From ...
*
Arnold Toynbee Arnold Toynbee may refer to: * Arnold Toynbee (historian, born 1852) (d. 1883), British economic historian * Arnold J. Toynbee Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an ...
*
Polly Toynbee Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (; born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for ''The Guardian'' newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 19 ...
* Jill Tweedie * Bibi van der Zee * F. A. Voigt *
Ed Vulliamy Edward Sebastian Vulliamy (born 1 August 1954) is a British journalist and writer. Early life and education Vulliamy was born and raised in Notting Hill, London. His mother was the children's author and illustrator Shirley Hughes, his father ...
* Hilary Wainwright *
Hank Wangford Samuel Hutt, known by the stage name Hank Wangford (born 15 November 1940), is an English country and western songwriter. "Hank is a good smoke screen. He can do things I can't do. He's my clown," says Dr. Hutt, who has been struggling to bala ...
*
Jim Waterson James "Jim" Waterson (born March 1989) is an English journalist who is the media editor of ''The Guardian'' and was previously political editor of BuzzFeed UK. Early life Waterson was born in York. He graduated from Jesus College, Oxford in 2011, ...
*
Jonathan Watts Jonathan Watts is a British journalist and the author of ''When a Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save the World - or Destroy It''. He served as president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club#Beijing, Foreign Correspondents' Club of China fr ...
*
Francis Wheen Francis James Baird Wheen (born 22 January 1957) is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster. Early life and education Wheen was born into an army familyNicholas Wro"A life in writing" ''The Guardian'', 29 August 2009 and educated at two ind ...
*
Brian Whitaker Brian Whitaker (sometimes credited as Brian Whittaker; born 13 June 1947) is a British journalist and writer. He studied Arabic studies at the University of Westminster and Latin (BA Hons) at the University of Birmingham. A former joint invest ...
*
Estelle White Elizabeth Estelle White (4 December 1925 – 9 February 2011) was a British composer who wrote over 160 hymns, several masses, and music for theatre. White grew up in a musical family on Tyneside, where she learned to play the piano, guitar, clarin ...
* Michael White * Ann Widdecombe *
Zoe Williams Zoe Abigail Williams (born 7 August 1973) is a Welsh columnist, journalist, and author. Early life Zoe Abigail Williams was born on 7 August 1973 in Hounslow, West London, England. Williams was educated at the independent Godolphin and Latymer ...
*
Ted Wragg Professor Edward Conrad Wragg (26 June 1938 – 10 November 2005) known as Ted Wragg, was a British educationalist and academic known for his advocacy of the cause of education and opposition to political interference in the field. He was Prof ...
*
Hugo Young Hugo John Smelter Young (13 October 1938 – 22 September 2003) was a British journalist and columnist and senior political commentator at ''The Guardian''. Early life and education Born in Sheffield into an old recusant Roman Catholic family, h ...
*
Gary Younge Gary Andrew Younge , (born January 1969) is a British journalist, author, broadcaster and academic. He was editor-at-large for ''The Guardian'' newspaper, which he joined in 1993. In November 2019, it was announced that Younge had been appointe ...
*
Xue Xinran Xuē Xīnrán (, pen name ''Xinran'', born in Beijing in 1958) is a British-Chinese journalist, author, speaker, and advocate for women's issues. She was a popular radio personality in China with a call-in program named "Words on the Night Br ...
* Tony Zappone *
Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New Y ...
*
Victor Zorza Victor Zorza (born Israel Wermuth; 19 October 1925 – 20 March 1996) was a Polish born journalist who contributed to the West's understanding of the Soviet Union, and was later known for pioneering work promoting palliative care in Russia. ...
Cartoonists: * David Austin * Steve Bell *
Joe Berger Joseph David Berger ( ; born May 25, 1982) is a former American football guard in the National Football League (NFL) for the Miami Dolphins, Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings. He was drafted by the Carolina Panthers in the sixth round of the ...
*
Berke Breathed Guy Berkeley "Berke" Breathed (; born June 21, 1957) is an American cartoonist, children's book author, director, and screenwriter, known for his comic strips ''Bloom County'', '' Outland'', and ''Opus''. ''Bloom County'' earned Breathed the Pulit ...
* Biff *
Peter Clarke Peter Clarke may refer to: *Peter B. Clarke (1940–2011), British religious scholar *Peter J. Clarke, U.S. Navy admiral, see Joint Task Force Guantanamo * Peter Clarke (admiral) (born 1951), Australian admiral *Peter Clarke (artist) (1929–2014 ...
*
Les Gibbard Les Gibbard (26 October 1945 – 10 October 2010) was a New Zealand-British political cartoonist, journalist, illustrator and animator. As a political cartoonist at ''The Guardian'' newspaper for 25 years, Gibbard became the longest-serving artist ...
* John Kent * Jamie Lenman * David Low * Martin Rowson *
Posy Simmonds Rosemary Elizabeth "Posy" Simmonds MBE, FRSL (born 9 August 1945) is a British newspaper cartoonist, and writer and illustrator of both children's books and graphic novels. She is best known for her long association with ''The Guardian'', for wh ...
* Garry Trudeau Satirists: * John Crace * Jeremy Hardy *
Armando Iannucci Armando Giovanni Iannucci (; born 28 November 1963) is a Scottish satirist, writer, director, producer, performer, and panellist. Born in Glasgow to Italian parents, Iannucci studied at the University of Glasgow followed by the University of ...
* Terry Jones * Craig Brown as "Bel Littlejohn" * John O'Farrell *
Mark Steel Mark Steel (born 4 July 1960) is an English author, broadcaster, stand-up comedian and newspaper columnist. He has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in ''The Guardian'', '' ...
Experts: *
Tim Atkin Tim Atkin is a British Master of Wine, and a wine journalist, broadcaster and commentator. He is also a judge of several international wine competitions and a photographer. Career Atkin writes for a number of publications, including: a monthly co ...
*
Matthew Fort Matthew Fort (born 29 January 1947) is a British food writer and critic. Matthew Fort is the son of the Conservative MP Richard Fort, who died when he was 12. His brother is the writer Tom Fort. He attended Eton College, and later Lancaster Un ...
*
Malcolm Gluck Malcolm Gluck is a British author, broadcaster and wine columnist. Career Initially an advertising copywriter for Collett Dickenson Pearce, Doyle Dane Bernbach, a founder employee of Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and later creative director for Lin ...
* Tim Hayward Photographers and picture editors: * Herbert Walter Doughty (''The Manchester Guardian'' first photographer, July 1908) *
Eamonn McCabe Eamonn McCabe (28 July 1948 – 2 October 2022) was a British photographer. He began as a sports photographer and later worked in editorial portrait photography. Many of his portraits are held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery ...
* Sean Smith


Guardian News & Media archive

''The Guardian'' and its sister newspaper ''The Observer'' opened The Newsroom, an archive and visitor centre in London, in 2002. The centre preserved and promoted the histories and values of the newspapers through its archive, educational programmes and exhibitions. The Newsroom's activities were all transferred to
Kings Place Kings Place is a building in London’s Kings Cross area, providing music and visual arts venues combined with seven floors of office space. It has housed the editorial offices of ''The Guardian'' newspaper since December 2008 and is the for ...
in 2008. Now known as The Guardian News & Media archive, the archive preserves and promotes the histories and values of ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'' newspapers by collecting and making accessible material that provides an accurate and comprehensive history of the papers. The archive holds official records of ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'', and also seeks to acquire material from individuals who have been associated with the papers. As well as corporate records, the archive holds correspondence, diaries, notebooks, original cartoons and photographs belonging to staff of the papers. This material may be consulted by members of the public by prior appointment. An extensive ''Manchester Guardian'' archive also exists at the University of Manchester's John Rylands University Library, and there is a collaboration programme between the two archives. Additionally, the British Library has a large archive of ''The Manchester Guardian'' available in its British Library Newspapers collection, in online, hard copy, microform, and CD-ROM formats. In November 2007, ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'' made their archives available over the internet via DigitalArchive. The current extent of the archives available are 1821 to 2000 for ''The Guardian'' and 1791 to 2000 for ''The Observer'': these archives will eventually run up to 2003. The Newsroom's other components were also transferred to Kings Place in 2008. ''The Guardian'' Education Centre provides a range of educational programmes for students and adults. ''The Guardian'' exhibition space was also moved to Kings Place, and has a rolling programme of exhibitions that investigate and reflect upon aspects of news and newspapers and the role of journalism. This programme often draws on the archive collections held in the GNM Archive.


See also

* * * ''
Guardian Monthly Guardian Media Group plc (GMG) is a British-based mass media company owning various media operations including ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer''. The group is wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which exists to secure the financial and e ...
'' * '' The Guardian Weekly''


References


Further reading

* * * *


External links

*
History of The Guardian
* * * (historic) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Guardian, The 1821 establishments in England Centre-left newspapers Daily newspapers published in the United Kingdom History of Manchester Liberal media in the United Kingdom National newspapers published in the United Kingdom Newspapers published in London Newspapers published in Manchester Progressivism in the United Kingdom Publications established in 1821 Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers Republicanism in the United Kingdom Pulitzer Prize for Public Service winners Podcasting companies