U.K. 'Guardian' newspaper in spotlight on NSA leaks; explains why it covers U.S.

"Why are we in America?" the editor of Britain's Guardian News and Media group, which publishes the Guardian across its print and digital platforms, was asked in an interview with New York magazine last year. "We're in America because a third of our audience is in America," Alan Rusbridger shot back. Since last week, when the Guardian started publishing its exclusive on the secret National Security Agency spying programs, and, subsequently, the man said to be responsible for those leaks, Edward Snowden, another rationale for Rusbridger's left-leaning news operation's U.S. presence has been laid bare. "By setting up an office in the U.S. and doing the same in Australia recently it's quite clear what the ambition is," said Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at London's City University, who also regularly writes about the media for the Guardian. "It wants to become the international liberal journalistic outlet." Greenslade said that the Guardian has an explicit mandate to ensure that it publishes as a "liberal organ" and that every editor of the Guardian — there have been four since World War II — has had an "avowedly liberal voice." It is written into the contract, he said. He said that the Guardian is one of the few newspapers to allow its staff to select its editor in chief, for example. In Greenslade's view, the Snowden revelations ought to put the Guardian in line to be the first British newspaper to win a Pulitzer Prize. "No one likes to be beaten in their own backyard, and that is exactly what the Guardian has done," he said.
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