The Guardian

The Guardian (originally The Manchester Guardian until 1956) is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom, published by the Guardian Media Group. Its editorial stance is generally left-of-centre, with most readers voting for the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats or one of the socialist or far-left parties. It is published in full color, and is printed in the Berliner size (470 mm × 315mm) - about half-way between broadsheet (The Guardian's former size) and tabloid. The change from broadsheet to Berliner size happened on the 12th of September, 2005. The Guardian is published on weekdays and Saturdays, with The Observer being published on Sunday.

The Guardian Media Group is owned by The Scott Trust, a non-profit organization founded in 1936 by John Scott, son of Guardian editor C. P. Scott. The Scott Trust funds The Guardian on the basis of its values: "a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to liberal tradition".

The Guardian is often referred to jokingly as "The Grauniad" in reference to the many misprints and spelling mistakes that used to appear. The satirical news magazine Private Eye attributes many of its quotes from the paper to "The Grauniad".

Trafigura

In 2009, The Guardian was the subject of a so-called "super-injunction" when reporting on Trafigura, a multinational energy company based in Switzerland. The law firm Carter-Ruck obtained an injunction against the paper to prevent it from reporting statements made in Parliament regarding Trafigura's relationship to the illegal dumping of toxic waste in the Côte d'Ivoire. In addition, they obtained an injunction against the paper to prevent them from reporting that there had been an injunction on them preventing them from reporting the story - this caused some to dub it a "super-injunction". The effectiveness of the super-injunction was critically undermined by users of the social networking site Twitter, who spread news of the gag order. In addition to causing a Streisand effect (in this case, spreading the news regarding Trafigura's alleged activities), the growing snowball of exposure given to this issue caused Carter-Ruck and Trafigura to drop the gag order.

Israel-Palestine coverage

The Guardian described a letter-writing campaign to them traced back to a HonestReporting bulletin, entitled "The Guardian: a mainstream British newspaper consistently blames Israel for everything." Guardian research showed the British HonestReporting website was linked to Media Watch International in New York City, and the specific bulletin was composed by Shraga Simmons, who works for Aish HaTorah in Israel. Honest Reporting gave the Guardian the 2008 "Most Questionable Terror Links: The Guardian" award for providing a link to Hamas's military wing, somehow "legitimizing" it.