Trust in news continues to drop, and it can be hard to distinguish fact-checked, reported journalism from the proliferation of AI-generated and partisan sites masquerading as local news.
With that in mind, we’ve introduced a new element to our website — The Trust Project’s Trust Mark.
This tells you The Maine Monitor upholds the group’s 8 Trust Indicators, an integrity and accountability standard that is used by nearly 300 news organizations worldwide.
Since our founding, we have always held ourselves to the highest standards of honesty, accuracy and fairness: owning up to mistakes and disclosing our funding. Knowing that trust in news is at a record low, we wanted to do more.
For the past seven months, we’ve worked closely with The Trust Project to improve our transparency and accountability to help our readers easily understand why our news is trustworthy.
We want readers to know that we embrace:
Best Practices: We are committed to reporting that is fair, accurate and reflects the standards for editorial independence and journalistic ethics adopted by the Society of Professional Journalists. If we make an error, we acknowledge and correct it. We disclose our sources of funding and the volunteer, nonpartisan board of directors that oversees our nonprofit newsroom. Our news and editorial staff has and retains full independence over news and editorial content to protect the best interests of our newsroom and the public.
Journalistic Expertise: We follow strict standards for gathering solid evidence and multiple perspectives. Our reporters are assigned to “beats” and develop an expertise in their areas of specialization. The role of our journalists, their background, and how you can trust them to provide you with accurate reporting appears through our staff directory, at the end of each story we publish, and through their journalist profile page.
Labeling Types of Work: We want to ensure our readers are clear about what type of work they are viewing. (View the labels and their definitions.) We clearly identify reporting partnerships and collaborations with other newsrooms, and we clearly label articles that were produced by another newsroom but republished (with permission) on The Monitor’s website.
Providing Sourcing & References: We are transparent about our methods and processes, and we use hyperlinks to show the original source of online material. We credit other news sources when they reported significant findings before we did. We will call specific attention to additional materials you may wish to view so that you can be fully confident in our reporting.
Clarifying Methods: We strive to help readers understand how we approached a story, the methods we used (interviews, requests for government records, confidential records furnished by sources), the places we visited, and the kinds of people we spoke to, so that readers can judge for themselves whether our factual conclusions are reliable, impartial and credible.
Being Local: We are a part of our Maine community. Maine Monitor journalists live and work in Maine. We are deeply rooted in our community as citizens, residents and neighbors. We seek to travel widely across the state, recognizing that Maine is too vast to understand without broad engagement across diverse communities.
Seeking Diverse Voices: We aim to include a wide range of stories and perspectives. The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting and The Maine Monitor serve all of Maine and the diverse communities across Maine. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive board and staff that reflects the society we report on. As part of our mission to serve all Mainers, our newsroom is committed to ensuring that our stories reflect Maine’s diverse population and tell stories about people from a variety of backgrounds. We regularly review our style guide to ensure we are using appropriate and inclusive language in our work.
Accepting Actionable Feedback: We invite and take seriously all public feedback, whether praise, criticism or requests for corrections. We also welcome tips, suggestions and ideas for how to improve our coverage. Every member of our staff is listed on (and can be emailed through) our staff directory page. Confidential tips or corrections can be sent to contact@themainemonitor.org or through our contact form.
Among the nearly 300 other Trust Project news partners are BBC News, The Washington Post, The Texas Tribune, TEGNA (the parent company of News Center Maine), The Denver Post, The Economist, FRONTLINE, CBC News, Montana Free Press, Wisconsin Watch and Hong Kong Free Press. We’re very proud to be in the distinguished company of global and domestic news outlets — public, commercial and nonprofit — that share our commitment to these abiding principles.
