The Guardian Me­dia Ltd re­mains com­mit­ted to the high­est prin­ci­ples of jour­nal­ism.Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gabriel Faria yes­ter­day as­sured that the me­dia en­ti­ty was in full sup­port of "fair, bal­anced and ac­cu­rate re­port­ing by its re­porters."He said he has been ful­ly sup­port­ive of the me­dia team, and that the group has been pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary train­ing and equip­ment to com­pete at the high­est lev­el.

Faria, who con­tin­ues to head the me­dia group, al­so said Judy Ray­mond re­mains ed­i­tor-in-chief of the Guardian news­pa­per. "Judy is the ed­i­tor-in-chief. Noth­ing has changed. She has agreed in a dis­cus­sion with me ear­li­er this week to ac­tu­al­ly go of­fline to work on the de­vel­op­ment of a more ro­bust ed­i­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy that will set the tone for the way we do our re­port­ing, to en­sure, that again, we pro­vide the high­est qual­i­ty of re­port­ing which is un­bi­ased, ac­cu­rate and fair."

Ac­cord­ing to Faria, on­ly two mem­bers of the ed­i­to­r­i­al staff had re­signed, adding that more than 100 jour­nal­ists across the me­dia group re­main com­mit­ted to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.He made it clear that the com­pa­ny has not been bow­ing to pres­sure from the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate of the day, and that any new pol­i­cy di­rec­tive that the com­pa­ny has em­barked up­on is based on its con­tin­ued thrust to im­prove the qual­i­ty of jour­nal­ism in the coun­try.

"I have no idea what they are talk­ing about," he said in re­sponse to claims that there was po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. He al­so stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that he had not re­ceived calls from any gov­ern­ment min­is­ter or any politi­cian with re­spect to a re­cent Guardian re­port about an HDC-leased Range Rover used by a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.On whether he re­ceived any calls from any­one in the Gov­ern­ment, Faria said, "I re­ceived no calls."

The man­ag­ing di­rec­tor added, "I know there were some con­cerns be­cause we were try­ing to im­prove the stan­dards of our jour­nal­ism, which meant that our jour­nal­ists had to do more work...do more back­ground checks to make sure that we pro­vide a full per­spec­tive on all the sto­ries. Maybe some peo­ple feel it was ask­ing too much."Faria re­it­er­at­ed that he has been ful­ly sup­port­ive of the ed­i­to­r­i­al team.

No po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence

"I have been ful­ly sup­port­ive of our team of jour­nal­ists. We have re­cent­ly im­proved our ed­i­to­r­i­al in­fra­struc­ture. In fact, our lev­el of train­ing has gone up sig­nif­i­cant­ly in an aim to en­sure that what we pro­duce is of the high­est qual­i­ty," he said."We want to lift the stan­dard of jour­nal­ism and it means do­ing more work. And the on­ly thing I can as­sume is that peo­ple feel that is un­rea­son­able. I don't know, that's un­for­tu­nate..."

Faria not­ed that while some peo­ple may not be com­fort­able with changes, in the me­dia en­vi­ron­ment change is in­evitable."I have nev­er and no man­age­ment per­son has ever told re­porters what to write, what not to write or what sto­ries to pur­sue. And we have no plans to do that. We do want to make sure that we pro­vide a com­plete sto­ry to our read­ers so they walk away ful­ly knowl­edge­able of all the facts."

On the 1996 walk­out from the Guardian news­room based on po­lit­i­cal pres­sure from the then gov­ern­ment, Faria said he did not have all the facts since he was not em­ployed with the com­pa­ny at the time."I don't have all the de­tails of what hap­pened in 1996. The rea­son we are talk­ing here is to en­sure that we com­mu­ni­cate to our au­di­ence and em­ploy­ees our com­mit­ment to the high­est stan­dards of jour­nal­ism."

To em­ploy­ees of Guardian Me­dia Ltd, Guardian read­ers, those who lis­ten to the com­pa­ny's ra­dio sta­tions and watch CNC3, Faria as­sured it will be busi­ness as usu­al."Look out for the next big scoop!" he said.