Everything about The Washington Times totally explained
The Washington Times is a daily
broadsheet newspaper published in
Washington, D.C., the capital of the
United States. It was founded in 1982 by
Unification Church founder
Sun Myung Moon,
Bo Hi Pak, one of his main assistants, and other church members. As of
March 31,
2007, the
Times had an average daily
circulation of 102,351, about one-seventh that of its chief competitor,
The Washington Post.
Founding
The
Times is a publication of
News World Communications, Inc., described by the
Columbia Journalism Review as "the media arm of Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church". News World was founded by
Moon and
Bo Hi Pak, and its
board of directors are members of the
Unification Church.
At the time Washington had only one major newspaper, the
Washington Post. The
Post was then considered politically liberal by most commentators and had been one of the leading critics of Moon's anti-communist political activism. Massimo Introvigne, in his book on the Unification Church, said that the
Post was "the most anti-Unificationist paper in the United States."
Investigative journalist
Robert Parry, who also called the
Times a "$3 Billion Propaganda Organ" for the
Republican Party, wrote about the founding of the
Times:
» By the 1980s, the likes of South Korean theocrat Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Australian media mogul
Rupert Murdoch were pouring billions of dollars into a rapidly expanding right-wing media. From these investments came a plethora of well-financed think tanks, year-round attack groups, and a vertically integrated conservative news media – from books, magazines and newspapers to radio, TV and eventually the Internet. Right-wing activists flocked to Washington and New York for good-paying jobs as journalists and pundits.
In December of 2000, Moon said:
» "We even have to utilize the media for the sake of church development. The church is the mind and the media is the body, to reach the external world. We should begin that movement and activity in the United States, because the Washington Times and UPI are headquartered there. Once we establish our organization in the United States, it can be expanded to the world without much alteration."
By 2002, the Unification Church had spent about $1.7 billion in subsidies for the
Times. The paper has lost money every year that it has been in business. In 2003,
The New Yorker reported that a billion dollars had been spent since the paper's inception, as Rev. Moon himself had noted in a 1991 speech, "Literally nine hundred million to one billion dollars has been spent to activate and run the
Washington Times". In 2002,
Columbia Journalism Review suggested Moon had spent nearly $2 billion on the
Times
Through its ownership and subsidies of News World, the Unification Church also funds
Insight Magazine, formerly a print publication but since 2004 a solely online publication. Unification Church subsidies also cover the operating losses of
United Press International, another News World property. News World Communications also owns the
Middle East Times,
Tiempos del Mundo,
Segye Ilbo,
Sekai Nippo, the
Zambezi Times, and magazines
GolfStyles (formerly the
Washington Golf Monthly) and
The World and I.
Early history
The
Times was founded the year after the Washington Star, the previous "second paper" of D.C., went out of business, after operating for over 100 years. A large percentage of the staff came from the recently defunct Washington Star. Some see the Times' coverage of local politics in particular as stronger than the Post's;
Post veteran
Ben Bradlee has said "I see them get some local stories that I think the
Post doesn’t have and should have had."
When the
Times began, it was unusual among American broadsheets in publishing a full color front page, along with full color front pages in all its sections and color elements throughout. Although USA Today used color in the same way, it took several years for the Washington Post, New York Times and others to follow suit. The Times originally published its editorials and opinion columns in a physically separate "Commentary" section, rather than at the end of its front news section as is common practice in U.S. newspapers. It ran television commercials highlighting this fact. Later, this practice was abandoned (except on Sundays, when many other newspapers, including the Post, also do it). The Washington Times also used ink that it advertised as being less likely to come off on the reader's hands than the Post's.
Dante Chinni wrote in the
Columbia Journalism Review:
» In addition to giving voice to stories that, as
Pruden says, “others miss,” the
Times plays an important role in Washington’s journalistic farm system. The paper has been a springboard for young reporters to jobs at
The Wall Street Journal,
The New York Times, even the
Post. Lorraine Woellert, who worked at the
Times from 1992 to 1998, says her experience there allowed her to jump directly to her current job at
Business Week. “I got a lot of opportunities very quickly. They appreciated and rewarded talent and, frankly, there was a lot of turnover.”
During the
1988 United States presidential election, the
Times printed a false rumor about candidate
Michael Dukakis's mental health.
Political leanings
The Times is politically
conservative. It was President
Ronald Reagan's preferred newspaper. Some have cited it along with the
Fox News Channel and
talk radio as epitomizing the
conservative media. It also prints op-ed and opinion articles that include
liberal and Democratic party voices; liberal columnist
Clarence Page is a regular contributor. Also featured are
libertarian opinion pieces, almost always from scholars at the DC-located
Cato Institute.
Conservative commentator
Paul Weyrich has called the
Washington Times an antidote to its liberal competitor:
» The Washington Post became very arrogant and they just decided that they'd determine what was news and what wasn't news and they wouldn't cover a lot of things that went on. And the
Washington Times has forced the
Post to cover a lot of things that they wouldn't cover if the
Times wasn't in existence.
In 1997
Ronald Reagan said about the
Times:
» The American people know the truth. You, my friends at The Washington Times, have told it to them. It wasn't always the popular thing to do. But you were a loud and powerful voice. Like me, you arrived in Washington at the beginning of the most momentous decade of the century. Together, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. And -- oh, yes -- we won the
Cold War.
According to the
Columbia Journalism Review, "Because of its history of a seemingly ideological approach to the news, the paper has always faced questions about its credibility." Salon.com and The Daily Howler have published analyses of what they believe are serious factual errors and examples of bias in the paper's news coverage. Conservative-turned-liberal writer David Brock, who worked for the Times' sister publication
Insight, said in his book
Blinded by the Right that the news writers at the
Times were encouraged and rewarded for giving news stories a conservative slant. In
Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy Brock wrote "the
Washington Times was governed by a calculatedly unfair
political bias and that its journalistic ethics were close to nil."
Racism scandals
Former
Times editor
Robert Stacy McCain was accused of racism in a 2002
New York Press column by
Michelangelo Signorile that reported on McCain's criticism of
Abraham Lincoln, pro-slavery sympathies toward the
Confederacy in the
Civil War and McCain's membership in the neo-Confederate organization
League of the South, which the
Southern Poverty Law Center called "rife with white supremacists and racist ideology."
Columnist
Samuel Francis, after speaking at a conference hosted by
American Renaissance, a self-described "pro-white" group, was subsequently fired by editor-in-chief
Wesley Pruden.
Former Editor in Chief Pruden has been described by former
Times writer
George Archibald as an "an unreconstructed Confederate" who "still believes the South and slavery were right". Archibald also confirmed and corrobrated a report by
The Nation that described former Managing Editor Fran Coombs as a "raging racist who despises blacks, Jews, and Hispanic immigrants, and looks down on women...". Coombs's wife Marion subsequently confirmed charges of racism about her and her husband during an interview by
The Nation's Max Blumenthal
Recent changes
In 2006 Blumenthal reported in
The Nation that Sun Myung Moon's son
Hyun Jin Moon (sometimes called Preston Moon) and editor at large
Arnaud de Borchgrave wanted to remove control of the
Times from Pruden and Coombs, to "shift the paper away from their brand of conservatism, which is characterized by extreme racial animus and connections to nativist and neo-Confederate organizations" In February 2007, former
Times reporter George Archibald wrote that long time Unification Church leader
Tom McDevitt would soon be taking office as president of the Washington Times Corporation and expressed hope that he'd bring about needed changes in the
Times organization. In March 2007 McDevitt became the corporation's president. In November 2007, the
Washington Post reported that Pruden planned to step down soon and that the
Times was looking for a new editor in chief.
On
January 14,
2008, it was announced that Executive Editor Wes Pruden would retire, effective January 24. In a surprise move,
Times Managing Editor Fran Coombs, who had long been presumed to be Mr. Pruden's heir as top editor at the
Times, resigned the same day Pruden's retirement was announced.
On
January 28,
2008, John F. Solomon began work as executive editor of the
Times. He is known for his work as an investigative journalist for AP and the
Washington Post, and was most recently head of investigative reporting and mixed media development at the
Post. Solomon is quoted as saying:
» The only point I've made with the reporters and editors who write for the news pages is there must be a bright line between opinion and editorializing that rightfully belongs on the op-ed and commentary pages and the fair, balanced, accurate, and precise reporting that must appear in the news sections of the paper.
Within a month the
Times changed some of its
style guide to conform more to mainstream media usage. The
Times announced that it would no longer use words like "illegal aliens" and "homosexual," and in most cases opt for "more neutral terminology" like "illegal immigrants" and "gay," respectively. The paper also decided to stop using "Hillary" when referring to Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the word "marriage" in the expression "gay marriage" will no longer appear in quotes in the newspaper. These changes in policy drew criticism from some conservatives
As of 2007, home delivery of the paper in its local area is made in bright orange plastic bags, with the words, "Brighter. Bolder. The Washington Times" and a slogan which changes. Two of the slogans are "The voice and choice of discerning readers" and "You're not getting it all without us," which may be a response to the current slogan used by its much larger competitor,
The Washington Post, which uses the slogan, "If you don't get it, you don't get it." Starting in 2008, the paper has apparently discontinued the "all without us" slogan and has focused on the "voice and choice" logo for its bags.
Criticism and controversies
Editorial independence from Unification Church
In 1984, two years after founding the Times, Moon said:
"The means of doing battle around the world have changed markedly. Instead of the conventional warfare of military forces, we've three major types of warfare today. First of all is ideological warfare; secondly is the warfare between intelligence forces; and thirdly, the warfare of propaganda."..."In today's warfare of ideology, intelligence and propaganda, nobody can compete with Reverend Moon."(External Link
)
Commenting in 1996 about Unification Church ownership of the
Times and other news outlets, Moon said:
"That is why Father has been combining and organizing scholars from all over the world, and also newspaper organizations, in order to make propaganda."(External Link)(External Link)(External Link)
In 2002, during the 20th anniversary party for the
Times, Moon declared, "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."
Journalism experts have said that the Church has significant influence on the
Times editorial content and story selection, In 1982 editor-in-chief
James Whelan said, "The one constant would be our editorial independence. We would never be told to put anything in the paper; more important, perhaps, we'd never be asked to leave anything out." Two years later Whelan told those attending the Heritage Foundation's 'Second Annual Distinguished Journalist Lecture' that he resigned from the
Times rather than accepting what he saw as church interference with his operation of the paper, saying "I have blood on my hands."
The
Times has also been criticized for taking a too-soft position on
human rights abuses in
North Korea and
China due to Unification Church business projects in those countries.
NEA "blame America" controversy
On
September 5,
2002,
Salon.com writer
Brendan Nyhan published "The big NEA-Sept. 11 lie; How the Washington Times helped create a myth about the teachers' union and Sept. 11". The controversy was created shortly before the first anniversary of the
September 11, 2001 attacks by Ellen Sorokin in a front page article of the
Washington Times. Journalist Nyhan says that Sorokin falsely attributed statements and "lesson plans" to the
National Education Association (NEA), and was "intentionally deceptive" in her use of out-of-context quotes selectively "farmed" from an essay written by Brian Lippincott of the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the
John F. Kennedy University in California.
Nyhan described Sorokin's reporting of Lippincott's statements as "intentionally deceptive", and Janet Bass of the
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) claimed that Sorokin had distorted her statements for the article, charging that the
Times left out a sentence making it clear that Bass was referring solely to Lippincott's lesson plan; a wire story published two days before the
Times article quoted Bass as saying that the AFT had no problem with any of the other links or materials on the NEA's site. Nyhan documents how the "
media echo chamber" picked up the story, and provides several instances of the
Times echoing its own discredited story, as the
Times added further distortions in the following days. Nyhan said the
Times had "lied" as it "refined the myth even further" on August 20, by "framing direct quotes from Lippincott as NEA creations with false phrases like 'the NEA disgustingly lectures' and 'the NEA urges teachers...' Nyhan says that the
Times repeated the process again on Aug. 22, and that the
Times was "feeding off its own spin."
The
Boston Globe criticized both the Times' distorted portrayal of the Lippincott essay, and its attributions of that portrayal to the NEA. About the essay, saying "even Lippincott doesn't suggest that we brought the attacks on ourselves - or that we don't know who the perpetrators are. In context,
any group clearly doesn't mean Al Qaeda or the Taliban, but all Arab-Americans". The
Globe pointed out that the NEA's site "offers links to provide an overview on Afghanistan, Osama bin Ladin, the terrorists who killed innocent Americans on Sept. 11, and the Qaeda network," and that the NEA also featured links to "the CIA and the Department of Defense, a speech by President Bush, and materials on the Constitution of the United States," and said, "the charges of anti-Americanism flung at the NEA are wildly exaggerated and sometimes disturbingly akin to a
smear." On
August 20,
2002, NEA President Bob Chase refuted the story, saying that the Sorokin article had been written before the NEA's "Remember 9/11" website went live.
Notable current and former writers
News
Opinion
Lawrence Kudlow
Sports
Dan Daly (columnist)
Dick Heller (columnist)
Tom Knott (columnist)
Thom Loverro (columnist)
Computers
Mark Kellner
Metro
Adrienne T. Washington (columnist)
Tom Knott (columnist)
Fred Reed (police beat, later took on a broader purview)
Former
David Brooks
Dave Fay (deceased)
Samuel Francis (fired)
Jeremiah O'Leary (deceased)
Bill Sammon (left the paper)
Rowan Scarborough (left the paper)
James G. Lakely
David Brock
Jeffrey Kuhner
Wes Johnson (Cartoonist, Martini 'n Clyde - 1990-1992)
Executives, editors and managers, present and past
Editors-in-chief
James Whelan (1982-1984)
Smith Hempstone (1984-86)
Arnaud de Borchgrave (1986-1992); currently editor-at-large
Wesley Pruden (1992-2008)
John F. Solomon (2008- )
Managing editors
Josette Sheeran Shiner (1992-1997)
William Giles (1997-2002)
Fran Coombs (2002-2008)
David W. Jones (2008-present)
Others
Tony Blankley - former Editor of the Editorial Page (2002-2007)
Tony Snow - former Editor of the Editorial Page (1987-1990)
Robert Stacy McCain - Assistant National Editor
Daniel Wattenberg - Arts and Entertainment Editor
Notes and references
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Washington Times'.
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