Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Manchester Guardian was founded on the 5th of May 1821 by John Edward Taylor. Taylor was a textile trader who established the paper with backing from a group of non-conformist businessmen known as the Little Circle.
The Manchester Guardian opposed slavery but argued that the Union blockade caused suffering in British towns, leading some to support the South. In 1861, the paper portrayed Northern states as imposing a burdensome trade monopoly on the Confederate States and later criticized Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation for stopping short of a full repudiation of slavery.
C. P. Scott served as editor for 57 years from 1872 and became the paper's owner in 1907 when he bought it from the estate of Taylor's son. He transformed the regional paper into a nationally recognized force and supported causes such as women's suffrage and the Balfour Declaration while ensuring editorial independence through the Scott Trust.
In June 2013, The Guardian broke news of the secret collection of Verizon telephone records and revealed the PRISM surveillance program after it was leaked by Edward Snowden. The newspaper destroyed hard drives containing the information in July 2013 under supervision from UK intelligence agents to avoid legal action, though the US website won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2014.
The Guardian sold The Observer to Tortoise Media in December 2024 to streamline operations and focus on the core Guardian brand after a 32-year relationship. The sale was agreed in principle on the 6th of December 2024 and closed on the 18th of December 2024, with a new Observer website launching on the 25th of April 2025.