Living our Values: 5 facts about the Guardian

Did you know that the Guardian News & Media (GNM), who publish the guardian and The Observer, is owned by the Scott Trust. The Trust was set up in 1936 to safeguard the journalistic freedom, independence and liberal values of the Guardian in perpetuity. These values are honesty, cleanness (integrity), courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and the community.

In our annual Living our Values 2015 report we set out how we try to live the Scott Trust values in our editorial, operations, commercial and digital activities and in our treatment of our people and our communities.

We want to give you the confidence that we will continue to uphold these cherished values. We want to make you proud of being part of the guardian, whether you read us or comment, work for us (or with us) or support us through membership.

Our great former editor CP Scott who set out our values over 94 years ago said that ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’. Below are five examples of how we live our values:

Honesty

The Guardian listens to its readers in an effort to maintain an open relationship and gain an understanding of their concerns and beliefs – in our latest readers’ survey, we asked our global audience if they think we are open (60%) and uphold our values (79%).

Integrity

By responding to challenges such as climate change in our own business, we hope to demonstrate our integrity. We manage and monitor the carbon footprint of both our print and digital operations.

Courage

Editorial campaigns tackling issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and modern day slavery demonstrate our courage in standing up for what we believe is right and empowering others to take action. 3 million people visited The Keep it in the Ground climate change campaign pages in the first 10 weeks.

Fairness

The Guardian is committed to treating people with dignity and respect - 82% of our people feel they are treated with fairness and their views are listened to (63%).

A sense of duty to reader and community

We are passionate about our readers and communities. Every year, we run dozens of projects with our community partners including Volunteering Week and our Education Centre welcomed its 100,000th visitor in 2014/15.