© Suzanne Plunkett / ReutersBritish daily newspaper The Guardian
According to its fans, the Guardian is the world's leading "progressive" news outlet. A place full of latter-day Sydney Schanbergs shining light where darkness prevails. They contend it stands apart from the corporate press, due to being controlled by the Scott Trust, and cite its open-access website as proof of its commitment to freedom of information. Successful campaigns on gay marriage and transgender rights are also used to illustrate how the paper often captures the zeitgeist.
However, its detractors have a different point of view. Spewing bile at "Guardianistas" and the "Grauniad" itself, they brand it an issues-led rag which nobody actually reads. They correctly point out that the Guardian 'boasts' the lowest daily sale of any UK national newspaper. This stood at 156,756 copies in January of this year. By contrast, the conservative Daily Mail still flogs 1,511,357 a day, on average. The Mail also trumps the Guardian online, when it comes to popularity.
Guardian online, which also uses content from its Sunday sibling The Observer, was launched in 1999 and used to be known as "Guardian Unlimited." The name, which sounded like a 90's pop song, was quietly dropped. Today the site is a strange hybrid of genuinely excellent sports coverage, often overblown features that pander to liberal obsessions, a one-note comment section and the odd bit of breaking news.
Comment: Such 'fact-making" would not have been possible without the protection of the United States and the collusion of the mainstream media which for decades carefully hid the process of Palestinian dispossession, long past a point where it could have been stopped.