Mail & Guardian
The Mail & Guardian is a South African weekly newspaper and online publication known for investigative journalism and political analysis. Published in English, it has a long history of reporting on corruption, governance, and social issues, and is generally regarded as left-leaning and liberal in outlook. It is considered one of the country's most influential outlets for in-depth reporting.
Mail & Guardian at a glance
- Country
- South Africa
- Region
- Southern Africa · Africa
- Kind of outlet
- Daily newspaper
- Editorial leaning
- Left-leaning
- Founded
- 1985
- Published from
- Johannesburg
- Website
- mg.co.za ↗
- Preview
- Renders inside Crosswire's comparison panes (last checked 2026-10-12).
Founding, ownership and location are directory records without individual source citations here. Ownership can change; verify these details with the publisher before quoting them. The preview status comes from the weekly audit that requests every outlet through Crosswire's own edge — see how the fetcher identifies itself.
Mail & Guardian front page, right now
Open a live, light-mode preview of Mail & Guardian's homepage. Use the language selector in the header to translate the preview into your language.
Load Mail & Guardian's live homepage here, or open the publisher directly.
How Crosswire groups Mail & Guardian
Crosswire groups Mail & Guardian as Left-leaning for comparisons within South Africa's directory. This is an approximate Crosswire label, not a verified rating of its individual articles or a claim that every journalist shares one position. In South Africa, News24 and TimesLIVE are listed as Centrist — so you can open Mail & Guardian beside a title of a different orientation and compare the same day's front pages directly.
Compare Mail & Guardian with another outlet from South Africa covering the same event and edition. Record the headline, publication time, named sources and links to original evidence. Similar leaning labels can still produce different coverage; a different label does not guarantee an independent source. Check the articles before interpreting a front-page difference as bias.
This is an approximate orientation, not a definitive judgement — and not a rating of quality or accuracy. Read how Crosswire classifies editorial leanings. This profile does not include an individual assessment citation. Page updated ; this is a content-change date, not a fresh fact-check of the outlet. Think this label is wrong? Suggest a correction.
Where Mail & Guardian sits in South Africa's press
Mail & Guardian was founded in 1985 and is published from Johannesburg. It is one of 6 outlets tracked in South Africa, and one of 2 daily newspapers among them — the other being TimesLIVE. By outlets tracked, South Africa ranks first of the 45 countries on Crosswire's Africa hub, which lists 178 outlets in all.
Across Africa, Crosswire tracks 73 of the 396 daily newspapers in the directory. The nearest counterparts to Mail & Guardian outside South Africa, starting with Southern Africa, are Eswatini Observer (Eswatini), Lesotho Times (Lesotho), The Nation (Malawi) and O País (Mozambique). Opening one of them beside Mail & Guardian is the quickest way to see what is a house style and what is a national one.
Other news outlets in South Africa
Browse and compare more sources from the same country.
Left-leaning outlets around the world
Outlets with a similar editorial orientation to Mail & Guardian, in other countries.
Explore other countries
Jump to another country's front pages on Crosswire.
Reading the news critically
The vocabulary and the method behind these comparisons.