We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. “A spectacular event does not always mean there will be spectacular political ramifications.”Ībout a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: But assigning importance to an event without understanding it is a fraught business.“Yes, it’s spectacular, but we always have to be cautious about the spectacular,” Peter says. Putin a legitimate military target? for example. But taken too far, it provides fuel for false narratives that can solidify into conspiracy theories that mislead and confuse.There are important questions to consider. When we do not have them, we sometimes indulge in responsible speculation that can serve the useful function of framing possibilities.

And even among our international team – journalists who have covered Russia and the nefarious methods of warfare worldwide for decades – there was no agreement.Except on one thing: “We absolutely don’t know, and we probably never will know,” says Peter Ford, the head of our international department.That, of course, doesn’t sit very well today, when everything can be seemingly known with the flick of a thumb. Nonsense, Ukrainians and Americans respond.So, what really happened?Was it the Ukrainians, worried that their spring counteroffensive might falter, or simply eager to take out the leader laying siege to their country?Or was it the Kremlin itself? Was it a so-called false flag operation – in which Russian air defenses destroyed the threat – aimed at stirring Russians to greater anger and enthusiasm for the war, or to generate support for a bid to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy?That was the question we were asking ourselves at the Monitor this morning. Ukraine intended to kill President Vladimir Putin with American help, Russian authorities say. Through the grainy eye of a surveillance camera, a drone descends toward the heart of the Kremlin and explodes. The video is spectacular, and the event was surely intended to be so.

Clifford the big red dog book author