The Scott Foundation, owner of the British Guardian newspaper, apologized for the newspaper’s founders’ links to overseas slavery and announced it would invest in a 10-year “restorative justice” program.
The Scott Foundation, which owns the paper, has issued an apology for the role its founders played in transatlantic slavery.
The foundation said it plans to invest more than £10m in communities descended from people the Guardian’s founders made a fortune on in the 19th century.
The Scott Foundation apologized for the role of the Guardian and its founders in this crime against humanity, as well as their early editorial positions that served to support the cotton industry and thus the exploitation of enslaved people.
The apology comes after an independent academic study commissioned in 2020 to investigate whether there is any historical connection between slavery and John Edward Taylor, the journalist and cotton merchant who founded the newspaper in 1821, and other Manchester businessmen who financed its founding.
The research report, released yesterday, revealed that at least 9 of Taylor and 11 of her supporters had links to slavery, particularly through the textile industry.
NEWSPAPER TO EXPAND ITS NEWS ON BLACK COMMUNITIES
The foundation announced that it will support projects in the Gullah Geechee Region and Jamaica within the next 10 years, appoint a program manager, and set up an advisory board to direct and review the work, with the funding announced under the “restorative justice program”.
It also announced that the newspaper would expand its coverage of black communities in the UK, US, Caribbean, South America and Africa.
The Scott Foundation said it will fund a new global scholarship program for mid-career black journalists and expand the Guardian Foundation’s educational scholarship program. (AA)