Political currents influencing journalism is an issue everywhere.
As we face a second Trump presidency, our reporters have never been more passionate about exposing threats to our democracy and holding power to account in America. Our country is in urgent need of free, trustworthy journalism – especially with a president-elect who has repeatedly called the press “the enemy of the people” and has said journalists should be “thoroughly scrutinized” and “pay a big price” for their work.
It has never been clearer that media ownership matters to democracy. Our country is deeply divided, and those divisions are also being exploited by bad actors looking to enrich themselves and undermine our democracy by spreading disinformation. From Elon Musk to the Murdochs, a small number of billionaire owners have a powerful hold on so much of the information that reaches the public about what’s happening in the world.
The Guardian is different. We have no billionaire owner or shareholders to consider. Our journalism is produced to serve the public interest – not profit motives.
Largely because of this independence, we are able to avoid the trap that befalls much US media: the tendency, born of a desire to please all sides, to engage in false equivalence in the name of neutrality. The way we see it, our job is to be truly fair, which means listening to different points of view, but also calling out the lies of powerful people and institutions – and making clear how misinformation and demagoguery can damage democracy.
From threats to our democracy, to the spiraling climate crisis, to complex foreign conflicts, our journalists contextualize, investigate and illuminate the critical stories of our time. As a global news organization with a robust US reporting staff, we’re able to provide a fresh, outsider perspective – one so often missing in the American media bubble.
Around the world, readers can access the Guardian’s paywall-free journalism because of our unique reader-supported model. That’s because of people like you. Our readers keep us independent, beholden to no outside influence and accessible to everyone – whether they can afford to pay for news, or not.
