The Guardian

The Guardian is owned by mass media firm Guardian Media Group (GMG) Plc. The Group’s chair, Neil Berkett, branded net neutrality "a load of bollocks" in 2008, when he was Virgin Media CEO.

GMG’s main business, Guardian News and Media, publishes the Guardian, its Sunday sister paper the Observer, the Guardian Weekly and dedicated website theguardian.com.

The group has a portfolio of investments, which support its journalistic output and offer it financial security. GMG is also financed by advertising sales, and third-party backers who sponsor specific projects. Among these, are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

GMG is controlled by the Scott Trust, which was founded in 1936 and became a limited company in 2008. The trust’s profits do not benefit shareholders or a proprietor, but are reinvested to support journalism that is supposedly free from commercial or political interference.

Announced tdy that I will succeed Liz Forgan as Scott Trust Chair in 2016. Great honour to be asked to take this role 1/3

— alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) December 10, 2014

The Guardian’s publisher, Guardian News & Media, has long been plagued by financial losses. The firm was hit by losses of £44.2 million (US$66.6 million) in 2011/2012 and £30.9 million in 2012/2013, prompting it to sell its stake in Trader Media Group in 2014. The move proved fruitful, with GNM reporting reduced losses and a sharp rise in digital revenues in 2015. In an effort to further to curb its deficit, GNM also set up a Guardian membership scheme in 2014.

One of Britain’s most prolific newspapers, The Guardian aspires to become the "world’s leading liberal voice." Originally titled the Manchester Guardian, it became the Guardian in 1959. With an average daily circulation of 168,369 copies in Britain, the Guardian’s print readership eclipses that of the Independent. However, its average daily circulation in the UK lags behind those of the Times, the Financial Times and the Telegraph.

Guardian News & Media holds 15 percent of Britain’s combined online, mobile and print readership, trumped only by DMG Media, which publishes the Daily Mail, and Trinity Mirror plc, which publishes the Daily Mirror.

Brilliant short video from @MediaReformUK: Who owns the UK media? https://t.co/57KrpyUyl6 #MediaReform

— Media Reform UK (@mediareformUK) October 30, 2015

The paper was awarded Newspaper of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2014 for its reporting on government surveillance. The same year, its American wing won a Pulitzer Prize for its exposure of National Security Agency (NSA) mass snooping. The Guardian also pocketed a British Press Award in 2011, after its work with WikiLeaks cast secret US embassy cables into the international spotlight.

John Edward Taylor founded the Manchester Guardian in1821 to promote liberal ideals following a bloody massacre, which left up to 20 people dead and hundreds injured in Manchester in 1819. Charles Prestwich (CP) Scott became editor of the paper in 1872 and purchased it in 1907. He vowed that its founding principles would remain resolute. Among these, was an insistence that "comment is free, but facts are sacred" and "the voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard." In a bid to stave off the predatory moves of competitors, CP Scott’s son John Russell (JR) Scott had officially passed ownership of the Manchester Guardian to the Scott Trust, which pledged to protect the paper’s editorial tradition and ensure its financial footing into the future. The Scott Trust appoints the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, as well as those of its sister publications.

Special correspondent for the Guardian Nick Davies is a British investigative journalist, author and documentary maker. His work focuses on crime, poverty, flawed policy and distortions in news media. He has won a string of British Press Awards, including journalist of the year, feature writer of the year, and reporter of the year.

The veteran journalist was key to the publication of secret US diplomatic cables and logs obtained by Julian Assange’s whistleblower organization WikiLeaks. In 2010, he set up an alliance of news outlets, which published the incendiary files that had been handed to WikiLeaks. His work in this area sparked international debate about US foreign policy and earned the Guardian the accolade of Newspaper of the Year.

Davies was also centrally involved in exposing phone hacking at the heart of Rupert Murdoch’s news empire.

The News of the World met its demise in 2011, after Davies revealed it had paid a private investigator to intercept voice messages left on the mobile phone of a schoolgirl who was missing in 2002. It later emerged the teenager had been brutally murdered.

Between July 2009 and July 2011, Davies wrote more than a hundred Guardian articles focusing on criminal activity in the News of the World and the failure of the British government, press regulators and police to hold Murdoch to account. His coverage of the phone hacking scandal sparked six separate police inquiries across England and Scotland, several arrests, and the establishment of Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into the culture of Britain’s press.

Political editor of the Guardian Patrick Wintour began his career at left-wing magazine the New Statesman as a fresh-faced college graduate. He became the Guardian’s Labour Correspondent in 1983, and was promoted to the position of Political Correspondent in 1988.Wintour left the Guardian in 1996, becoming political editor of the Observer. He rejoined the Guardian in 2000 as its chief political correspondent and was promoted to political editor in 2006. His sister, Anna Wintour, is the current editor-in-chief of the American edition of Vogue magazine.

Patrick Wintour’s analysis of Labour’s 2015 General Election defeat was noted by the party, which published an account of his observations on its site. The veteran journalist said ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband’s accidental omission of the deficit from his speech prior to voting day was a serious error. But he argued Miliband had become distracted by last-minute changes to the speech, and had found himself drawn into a catastrophic series of improvisations.

In a candid interview with Press Gazette in 2007, the left-leaning journalist stressed the importance of ethics in journalism. He said straight talking with contacts is key, as is respecting disclosures that have been made off the record. Wintour also voiced passion for his job, describing Britain’s political landscape as "a rich tapestry."

Self-confessed misanthrope, Charlie Brooker is a journalist, satirist, critic and broadcaster who writes for the Guardian. He is known for his scathing rants punctuated by writhing pessimism. He currently writes a comment piece in the ‘G2’ supplement of the Guardian, and previously wrote a weekly satirical column for the paper in which he reviewed TV shows.

In an opinion piece penned in the wake of the 2015 General Election, Brooker made a number of wry observations. He likened a victorious David Cameron to a "shiny computerized toe in a prime-ministerial suit," noting Labour had "tumbled through a wormhole back to the 1980s." He also predicted a further five years of Labour "pacing its enclosure like a depressed polar bear" as Cameron reigned supreme.

Brooker began writing a regular column in the Guardian called ‘Supposing’ in 2005, in which he pondered a series of odd scenarios. In it, he considered all sorts of leftfield questions such as what would happen if snipers were sanctioned to shoot smokers and whether that "scraggy-haired lunatic" lurking outside your window is "coming to get you."

Brooker’s ‘Screen Burn’ column for the Guardian, which reviewed a range of TV shows, first appeared in the paper in 2000. In one review, he called a fashion makeover show a "turd-polishing exercise" hosted by a "wilfully catty double act." In another, he slated long-running TV show Blind Date, which had been revamped. Venting his dislike of the show’s now-deceased host Cilla Black, he said her "squawk" made him want to slice his ears off and "hurl them into another dimension."

Brooker announced his decision to hang up his Screen Burn hat on October 2010, conceding he was "never a proper critic."

In June 2013, the Guardian published previously classified information about mass NSA snooping, leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The revelations included data on the secret collection of Verizon telephone records held by Barack Obama’s administration, the PRISM internet surveillance program and the GCHQ’s billion-pound snooping project, TEMPORA.

The Guardian was subsequently contacted by "a very senior government official" believed to be British Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, reportedly under the instruction of Prime Minister David Cameron. The official demanded that the data be handed over to the British government, but the Guardian’s then-editor, Alan Rusbridger, refused to do so, saying the paper would not betray its source.

After UK authorities threatened to pursue legal action against the Guardian and potentially close down its coverage of the Snowden leaks , Rusbridger agreed to destroy the computer hard drives containing the sensitive information. The process was overseen by two GCHQ officials at the Guardian’s headquarters in London.

Rusbridger later defended the actions, saying it was a "slightly pointless" task because the Guardian had other digital back-ups of the data abroad. He also noted the destruction of the drives allowed Guardian journalists to continue reporting on the Snowden revelations instead of surrendering the sensitive information to Britain’s courts.

In 1984 a 23-year-old Foreign Office clerk, Sarah Tisdall, anonymously sent in photocopied documents to the Guardian, describing the details of the imminent deployment of US nuclear cruise missiles in Greenham Common, already the site of a series of high-profile CND protests. The document also described the parliamentary tactics the Conservative government would use to justify the move.

The UK government launched a lawsuit, demanding that the Guardian hand over the documents, which could then be used to identify the whistleblower. The newspaper argued that the source was protected by the 1981 Contempt of Court Act, which meant that all whistleblowers were safe, unless they created risks for national security. The Guardian won the initial proceedings, when the court ruled that the documents did not put Britain in danger, but a higher court overturned the decision, claiming that someone who leaked this, could be tempted to reveal further confidential documents in the future.

Sarah Tisdall, whistle-blower pic.twitter.com/ooMfh0K4mq

— Sounds of the 20th C (@Sounds20thC) August 25, 2015

The Guardian complied, and turned over the documents. The newspaper itself had no clue about Tisdall’s identity, but Special Branch investigators were able to figure her out from the hallmarks left by the photocopier she used. Tisdall herself did not contest the charges, and was subsequently jailed for six months, for leaking state documents. She was released after four, but the Guardian’s editor Peter Preston revealed that putting her in harm’s way was his “biggest regret” during his tenure at the paper.

Following his posting in 2007, Luke Harding, the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, was primarily known for his admitted lack of Russian-speaking ability and the scandal when his plagiarism was pointed out by the eXile’s Mark Ames and Yasha Levine. It earned Harding the Plagiarist of the Year tag from the UK’s satirical Private Eye magazine, while the Guardian was forced to publish a correction and an apology.

But a single event changed all that. In February 2011 Harding, arriving at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, was stopped, barred from entering and put on the first plane back to the UK. The Russian Foreign Ministry explained that Harding had breached a number of rules, including the rules of accreditation for foreign journalists in Russia. In particular, he had left Russia for London without receiving a new foreign correspondent press card — "though he knew he should have done it," the ministry said. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov added Harding was welcome to return, providing he complied with administrative requirements.

But Harding wasn’t going to forgo his newfound fame as a bête noir of the Russian government. From an ordinary journalist, he was transformed into "the first Western reporter to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War" and hastily wrote a book, ‘Mafia State’. He outlined a blood-curdlingly subtle campaign against him, allegedly waged by the FSB. As his main piece of evidence, the Oxford-educated scribe presented a time when he came back to his flat, only to find the window open. Harding was sure that neither he, nor his wife and two children had opened it. Later that night, an alarm clock went off. Harding said he did not set it. Someone also changed his screensaver. Once, a woman came to his door. When he opened it, she did not say anything and left. Another time, someone called him up and asked for his mobile number. He did not give it. Harding insisted that all of these events were signs that he was being warned by the FSB to tone down his criticism of Russia.

When the Edward Snowden scandal broke, Harding was the obvious man for the job. There was one problem — Harding said the NSA were logging into his computer and deleting any negative passages about them, right in front of his eyes, while his keyboard beeped. But soon this stopped, and ‘The Snowden Files’ was published.

Some old accusations soon surfaced, with WikiLeaks claiming the book was just "unattributed re-writes of press reports." Julian Assange wrote in a scathing article that the book was "a hack job in the purest sense of the term. Pieced together from secondary sources and written with minimal additional research to be the first to market," while Snowden’s closest journalist associate Glenn Greenwald called it ‘The Inside Story of Edward Snowden’ by Someone Who Never Met or Spoke With Edward Snowden.

@wikileaks "The Inside Story of Edward Snowden", by Someone Who Never Met or Spoke With Edward Snowden

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 3, 2014

Since Harding’s departure, the Guardian has continued extensive, and largely negative, coverage of Russia, on issues such as Ukraine and Syria, as has been documented by several prominent citizen journalism media-watch blogs, such as Russia Insider, Media Lens and OffGuardian.

As well as a general stance, these sources cite several ethical violations by the newspaper, such as getting the man behind the British online investigative group Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, to write an article on his own report detailing alleged Russian shelling of eastern Ukraine, without acknowledging the conflict of interest. The Guardian was forced to issue a clarification, as well as another one in October over "mistranslated" claims from the Dutch Safety Board’s report into MH17 crash that a "bungled autopsy" was performed on the pilot of the downed plane.

The Guardian also operates a New East network, a blogging community that gives a platform predominantly to critics of the regime. The writers have often focused on excoriating Moscow over treatment of sexual minorities, journalists and provocative performance artists.

In response to criticism of its coverage below the line, the newspaper has alleged that many of the pro-Russian comment posters are, in fact, ‘Kremlin-paid trolls,’ though has presented little solid evidence for the assertion. The newspaper has published repeated articles on the subject.

In 2012, the Guardian Readers’ Editor Chris Elliot criticized a Guardian cartoon depicting Benjamin Netanyahu as a puppet master. He said it may have echoed anti-Semitic use of imagery employed by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

The controversial cartoon, which the Guardian had published during an Israeli military campaign against Gaza, had been created by award-winning cartoonist Steve Bell. The puppets Netanyahu clutched in the drawing depicted a perplexed William Hague, who was Britain’s foreign secretary at the time, and a maniacal former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who at the time held the position of Middle East peace envoy. Bell’s cartoon sparked about 30 complaints, including Jewish charity the Community Service Trust’s allegation he had used a well-known "anti-Semitic trope."

Here is the Steve Bell puppet master cartoon he was defending http://t.co/voGwYVQv #R4today

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) January 29, 2013

Elliot argued that caricature is a centuries-old tradition and every cartoonist’s right. As for Bell, he hit back, saying the comparison of his drawing to anti-Semitic imagery was “utterly unfair.” He rejected what he described as “faux intellectual” terms like “anti-Semitic trope,” saying they distorted the truth about his cartoon. "This is a crucial point – this is not about the Jews: it's about Binyamin Netanyahu,” Bell said.

On the eve of the Operation Desert Storm, popularly known as the first Gulf War, an article published in the Guardian rallied for Western military intervention in Iraq. Adopting an overtly hawkish tone, the piece argued the "brutal invasion" was a just response to Saddam Hussein’s "evil" regime.

"The simple cause, at the end, is just. An evil regime in Iraq instigated an evil and brutal invasion. Our soldiers and airmen are there, at UN behest, to set that evil to rights," the article stated.

The Guardian had previously expressed doubt over Western intervention in Iraq in the run-up to the war. A Guardian article, published in 1990, cautioned against a Western-led military campaign there, saying "Frustration in the Gulf leads temptingly to the invocation of task forces and tactical bombing, but the military option is no option at all."

In 1995 awarding-winning Irish journalist Maggie O’Kane, who was a regular contributor to the Guardian, admitted the British media had been duped by UK and US forces on the subject of the Gulf War.

"I knew we had done such a lousy job with the war, the truth, and the blood. This is a tale of how to tell lies and win wars, and how we, the media, were harnessed like 2,000 beach donkeys and led through the sand to see what the British and US military wanted us to see in this nice clean war. And the story of how, five year later, they are still telling lies about what happened to thousands of sick allied soldiers who were exposed to chemical weapons," she wrote.