One more reason to support them. Even if you don't always agree with their opinions, it's nice to move away from commercial journalism and keep things as open and transparent as possible.
The Guardian is commercial journalism. It is set up as a completely ordinary company. Historically the newspaper has been keenly interested in the concerns of the working classes, but that has not extended towards some kind of alternative non-commercial structure for it.
(The Scott Trust does not make much of a difference here. A business can have such a way to remain free of outside pressures but still be a straightforwardly commercial company.)
>it's nice to move away from commercial journalism and keep things as open and transparent as possible.
Open and transparent as possible is still not open or transparent.
There is no way to verify that what they published is actually what is running on their server... so publishing a repo means nothing in regards to "openness and transparency," for this or any other website. All of them are proprietary black boxes as far as the end user is concerned.
The Guardian is one of the most balanced news providers out there and you'd be hard pressed to find a more balanced English-speaking organization.
A recent, concrete example of this is all the breathless reporting about Chinese camps containing a "million" Muslims. The story was complete hogwash [1] that was breathlessly hyped by every American news organization. The Guardian provided the most restrained and actually facts-based reporting by far. There are plenty of other cases like this -- see similar examples involving Iraq and Iran.
I could imagine how not being fully committed to the pro-America hegemony might be confused with being left-wing though. It's the sort of thing where the problem is the problem, as they say.
WSJ, Economist, FT and New Yorker are all western publications, and way closer to providing an balanced journalism. Guardian destroyed their own reputation in the last two years by openly publishing paid pieces and propaganda, even advocating for property seizure (see all their articles on “nationalization” of FB). Economist/New Yorker on the other hand are great examples of a quality left-biased publication.
They were pretty consistent in their critic of polices of both GOP and democratic governments, and are usually pretty open in addressing issues in business from all sides. What do you find to be unbalanced in their reporting?
This is not journalism. The whole article quotes a paper published by a neocon think tank with ties to lobby groups payed by wealthy corrupt under investigation by the (Romanian) DNA. The article even hilariously uses references to recentnews.ro, long proven a fake news site, part of a network of fake news sites that launched the infamous "Pope shocks the world endorsing Trump".
The first link is an opinion piece, you do have to take those for what they are: opinion, not fact.
Usually the Guardian opinion pieces tilt to the left/progressive viewpoint, but not always. This is something I appreciate, not being always stuck inside a bubble.
The second link offers a summary and analysis of an interview of Assange, the original piece is linked, and while I didn't read all 3 articles completely I didn't see any massive distortion jump out.
No, that is not opinion. It's payed lobby masquerading as opinion. For anyone who is up-to-date with the tense political and social situation in Romania, that article is a tendentious, vile manipulation, at a time when many Romanians look to the west for support in the fight against corruption.
This is also my issue with TheGuardian. Their reporting on internal issues in foreign countries is lacking in impartiality. It is not clear to me whether this is intentional or whether it is just that they put trust in the wrong foreign sources. I suspect the latter. Nonetheless they end up publishing some really ignorant and biased pieces about counties that Britons have no clue about, and thus cannot hold the paper accountable for.
Based on the documented reaction of people to Trump admitting having paid off an adult film star (that is, not being surprised or caring), I'm starting to think "They don't know it's fake" is too easy of a reach.
The alternative exists that they really know the more strident bits of conservative media are fake, and just don't care. And indeed, delight in it because of its outlandishness.
(The Scott Trust does not make much of a difference here. A business can have such a way to remain free of outside pressures but still be a straightforwardly commercial company.)