""One of the Monitor's great achievements has been to maintain a century-long reputation for fairness and balance when many other media organizations are accused of bias and lack of objectivity," - John Hughes, former editor for the Monitor.
To understand why the Monitor is so trusted, we must go over a few points:
despite a religious article always being at the end of every issue (as requested by Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy), the Monitor does not promote the doctrine of the Church of Christ, Scientist. This is an interesting decision - in its article on the paper's first hundred years, the paper notes that Mary Eddy was determined to make sure that the paper's connection to the church was known, but this later led to conflicts involving the board of trustees
The Monitor avoids sensationalism. In a 2005 article for the Boston Globe, Alex Beam writes:
”The Web works well for the Monitor because it publishes the paper's distinctive brand of nonhysterical journalism -- let's just say the Michael Jackson trial isn't exactly front and center in the Monitor's pages -- in real time.”
And building off of this, the Monitor itself writes on its "About" page:
"We need you to hold us accountable – to keep us honest and grounded. To inspire us with what inspires you. Together, we can build a community of people who ask more from news."
As well as:
"[The] Monitor is committed to delivering news that is factual. Our bias is to present the world through a lens that is calm and measured, as well as characterized by honesty, fairness, compassion, respect, and goodness. We dare to see the world differently, but not by ignoring the challenges the world faces. Instead, we report stories that illustrate a path to progress or illuminate the ways of thinking that motivate people to act the way they do, shedding light on possibilities for how to move forward. We neither give in to fear nor incite it, but we strive to provide readers with facts and perspectives they can use to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
It also helps that the Monitor is a non-profit as it is a part of the church despite its non-promotion of Christian Science. They write:
"We are an independent voice, devoid of the corporate allegiances and pressures that critics say too often skew today's media. We seek to give our readers the information they need to come to their own constructive conclusions... The Monitor is funded by revenue from subscriptions, an endowment fund, donations, gifts, and profits from the Publishing Society. Additional funding to cover operating costs is provided by The First Church of Christ, Scientist. The Monitor also accepts outside grants to support general operations, special projects, and coverage of specific topics of interest to our readers, but without ceding any editorial independence."
Being a non-profit, like CSPAN or the Associated Press, allows it to not have to be sensational for clicks (and therefore more money, though they do need to keep the lights on) in a way that hasn’t worked for for-profit journalism such as (for example) the unbiased attempt of NewsNation. Mind you, this has become more prevalent in an era where such sensationalism has become even more important as print declines and the internet booms, but especially as news sites rely more on those internet numbers, forcing them to use these tactics to pull in more clicks, as in this example quoted from my CJR citation:
Slant is far from unique in this respect and this business model is becoming increasingly common, but opponents argue it means journalists will dumb down stories in order to get more clicks in order to earn a living.
In a way, it has worked for them; despite its print numbers declining (as of this post, they stand at about 72,000 - which is more than it was when that Boston Globe article came out - but is no longer daily but rather weekly), the paper has remained popular online. In his book on the paper, author Keith Collins noted that by 2011 the site had 22 million hits per month - this rivaled the Los Angeles Times.
Now, how did it get here though?
To understand this part, we must consider the impacts yellow journalism and its aftermath had on the founding of the Monitor. One of the biggest proponents of yellow journalism was Joseph Pulitzer, and later in his life Pulitzer had reversed his yellow tactics in favor of its roots; in turn, he not only restored the reputation of his World paper, but also had called out Eddy.
When she founded the newspaper in 1908, Mary Eddy set out to do so for a few reasons. One of these was the constant criticism of her and her church from the New York World - despite Pulitzer's attempts to raise the reputation of his paper, his team in the year and a half prior wrote that Eddy was senile, dying of an ailment, and decrepit - though I could not find the exact newspaper cited - and she set out to retaliate against this with her own response. However, she also saw the fear that such sensational reporting caused. She wrote:
Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper, at the price at which we shall issue it, we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought.
In his accounts, Frederic Moritz - a former Monitor employee from the 1970s until the early 1990s - expressed that Pulitzer and Eddy were both extremely impactful on journalism but also had similarities to each other. He notes how Eddy attempted to present her paper:
"Like the "new" New York Times, the Monitor stood for amore elevated discussion of public issues, seeking to supply context and perspective. Unlike "Yellow Journalism," it tended to screen out emotion and gripping, graphic portrayals of how "ordinary people" lived. It was sometimes seen as a paper of "the head," not "the heart."
This seems to suggest that the Monitor was meant to be a more rational answer to the sensationalist views of papers like Pulitzer's and other former "yellow journalists." He also expands on another era - when the Monitor took on McCarthyism:
"One example of how an emphasis on issues rather than personalities could be powerful journalism came in The Monitor's coverage of "McCarthyism." Richard L. Strout, a non-Christian Scientist who joined The Monitor in 1921, spotlighted abuses of Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in a firm but non personal manner. The Monitor's approach set a high standard at a time many media were intimidated and fearful of being labeled pro-Communist."
Another reason the Monitor is held to a higher standard of journalism is its affiliation with a medium often associated with reliability - public radio. MonitoRadio was a program operated by the church that was carried by public stations from 1984 to 1997 in an attempt to broaden the paper’s horizons. Though what I’m about to cite is after this time period, a 2005 study found that public radio such as NPR was often regarded as the most trusted news source in the country; it would be safe to assume that the Monitor by affiliation would be seen as trustworthy.
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