Washington Times

The Washington Times is a newspaper owned by Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, through its company News World Communications. The paper was first published on May 17, 1982. 

In January 2008, John Solomon was named Times executive editor, replacing the retiring Wesley Pruden.

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council
The Washington Times has been a corporate funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). See ALEC Corporations for more.

History
In a speech on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Washington Times, Moon explained his motivation behind establishing the paper. "I founded The Washington Times as an expression of my love for America and to fulfill the Will of God, who seeks to establish America in His Providence," he said.

"In the context of God's Will, there needed to be a newspaper that had the philosophical and ideological foundation to encourage and enlighten the people and leaders of America," he explained.

In Moon's analysis, there was an important role for the paper in bolstering support for the continuance of the cold war against Russia. "The Washington Times' editorials and columns supported the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) at a time when many were trying to block this critical development," he said.

"I do not have the slightest doubt that God used The Washington Times to help bring an end to the most pernicious worldwide dictatorship in history and gave freedom to tens of millions of people!" he said.

With the collapse of the USSR, Moon's support for anti-communist campaigns shifted to central America. "In the 1980s, the Contras in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other countries were fighting for their lives against the communist Sandinistas who were seeking to seize control of their countries, slaughtering thousands of people. While other media failed to recognize the seriousness of the situation. The Washington Times emphasized through its stories and columns the dangers of communist expansion in the hemisphere and why the freedom fighters should be supported. Once again, The Times news and information helped the leaders in Washington stay strong in their support for the Contras," he said.

During the 1990's with opportunities for anti-communist campaigns fading, Moon shifted focus to the "Cultural War" - "the fight against the degradation of values".

While editors of the Washington Times argue that the owners of the paper have no role in setting editorial policy, Moon made clear that he plays a critical role in the priorities of the publication. "Ten years ago, at the 10th anniversary celebration for The Times, I defined another mission for the media. This is the need for media to promote ethics and moral values in our society. For its second ten years, I envisioned for The Washington Times the task of contributing to bringing about a moral society. Because a peaceful world is only possible based on the existence of peaceful, ideal families, The Times became a newspaper that helped people understand the importance of strong moral, family values," he said.

In its third decade Moon has new priorities for the title: "...this is the time to emphasize and support faith, the time to emphasize and support spiritual values that are based on the faith of each individual," he said.

"While the media can provide all the facts, they also have the responsibility to provide values to prevent confusion and to provide leadership and direction, especially today when the entire world is flooded with news and information. The Washington Times and its affiliated media properties are taking a leading role in this regard," he said. 

In an article on the Unification Church website discussing the prospects of re-unification of North and South Korea, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, wrote: "With the establishment of The Washington Times in America we initiated a worldwide movement of ideally educating the free world, an intention that I had for a long time; we are also organizing around the globe to form many newspapers, to educate the world media, to give direction to university professors worldwide, to guide student movements in every nation, to bring about cooperation among various South American countries and to form understanding among the world religions." 

"This new era of media, with the massive distribution of news and information, requires leadership and clear guidance for the betterment of individuals based on values and on the knowledge of God and spirit world. The Washington Times and our family of media have been providing this direction for the past two decades and will continue to do so into our third decade. My hope is that each one of you as well will embody the qualities of defending freedom, promoting family values, and strengthening your faith in God so that you may become leaders of the world," he said.

In an August 2002 address at the Heritage Foundation, the Editor in Chief of The Washington Times, Wesley Pruden, who started work with the paper when it commenced in 1982, explained the mood of the time. "Ronald Reagan was new in town, trying to stoke the fires of the free market and pluck up the courage of those of us who still wanted to make a fight of it. He had managed to get himself elected President of the United States, but he was greeted, like the media establishment greeted us, with incredulity, suspicion, frustration, even anger," Pruden said.

Pruden defends his papers style of journalism as being more in tune with the public than other mainstream media. "We would not only cover the news without slant or bias, but give voice to those who had been shut out of the national debate. This challenged a smug and entrenched journalism establishment that was swiftly losing touch with its constituency," was how he explained the charter of the paper.

"The one constant would be our editorial independence. We would never be told to put anything in the paper; more important, perhaps, we would never be asked to leave anything out. All that was ever asked was to be faithful to the task of reporting the news without fear or favor, to get it first and get it right", Pruden told those attending the Heritage Foundation's 'Second Annual Distinguished Journalist Lecture'.

"We hold to conservative political views, but we do not cover the news with a conservative slant or bias. A newspaper with a conservative bias in covering the news is no better than the newspapers with a liberal bias, because the reader can never know when someone is blowing smoke at him. We keep our opinions, and we have a few, to the editorial and commentary pages, or to columns clearly identified as opinion, in the honored tradition of American newspapers," he said.

Gene Grabowski, who resigned in 1988 over the misleading alternation of an article, said of the Washington Times: "It's the Fox News of the print world." 

Another reporter, Dawn Ceol - daughter of Paul Weyrich resigned too after Pruden - who has been editor in chief since 1992 - altered a story she wrote about Anita Hill to be more critical of Hill. 

Beirich and Moser, writing in the Intelligence Report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, argue that those who dismiss The Washington Times as having little influence are mistaken. "But nobody has to actually read the Times to imbibe its spin on the news; the wilder its stories, the more likely television and print media are to pick them up and run with them," they wrote.

In particular they cited the case of a series of stories and editorials initiated by Washington Times reporter, Audrey Hudson, claiming that scientists had been caught attempting to fabricate evidence that lynx were more widespread than they really were.

The story was picked up by Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, and the Seattle Times, gaining widespread coverage within the US and even internationally. While the story was that the biologists who made the unauthorized lynx hair submissions claimed to be submitting blind samples in order to test the labs, the limited after the event retraction did little to diminish the impact of the original story.

In May 1992, after the Times had been operating almost ten years, Moon disclosed that he had invested "close to $1 billion" in the paper. 

Despite the major investments of previous years, as of late, the paper is struggling financially. A statement from the newspaper’s management did not mention a specific number of layoffs, but staff members said they received a letter that said the paper would be “reducing its work force by a minimum of 40 percent”. The layoffs were part of a strategy to revamp and re-energize the paper, according to Jonathan Slevin, the paper’s acting president and publisher. In another proposed changed to be instituted in the first quarter of 2010, The Washington Times will become a free newspaper in some areas of Washington, D.C.

Related Sourcewatch

 * Nancy E. Roman

Contact Information
3600 New York Ave NE Washington, DC 20002-1947 Phone (Switch): (202) 636-3000 Website: http://www.washtimes.com/

Articles & Speeches By Moon

 * Sun Myung Moon, "Way Of Unification" (Part 2), unification.net, November 21, 1986.
 * Sun Myung Moon, Founder's Address: "Absolute Values and The New Cultural Revolution: True Love and the Unified World," Fifteenth International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, J.W. Marriott Hotel, Washington, D.C., unification.net, November 28, 1986: "With the Washington Times as the core, we are establishing preeminence in the American print media."
 * Sun Myung Moon, Leader's Meeting, June 12, 1991: ""In the last nine years, the Church poured eight hundred million dollars in cold cash into The Washington Times. ... "
 * Sun Myung Moon, Founder's Address: "True Family and True Universe. Centering on True Love" 15th Anniversary of The Washington Times, June 16, 1997: "Fifteen years ago, when the world was adrift on the stormy waves of the Cold War, I established The Washington Times to fulfill God's desperate desire to save this world. Since that time, I have devoted myself to raising up The Washington Times, hoping that this blessed land of America would fulfill its world-wide mission to build a Heavenly nation."
 * Sun Myung Moon, "Freedom, Family, Faith - The Role of the Media in the 21st Century", Washington Times 20th Anniversary Banquet Washington DC, May 21, 2002.

General Articles

 * "The Dark side of Rev. Moon," The Consortium for Independent Journalism. This page has a small archive of stories relating to Rev. Moon and American politics between 1997 and early 2001.
 * Heidi Beirich and Bob Moser, "Defending Dixie:The Washington Times has always been conservative and error-prone -- now it's helping to popularize extremist ideas", Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center, undated.
 * Elisabeth Bumiller, "The Nation's Capital Gets A New Daily Newspaper", Washington Post, May 17, 1982; page C01.
 * Fred Clarkson, "Behind the Times: Who Pulls The Strings at Washington's No. 2 Daily?", Exra!, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, August/September 1987.
 * Allan Freedman, "Washington's Other Paper: Is the time right for the Times?", Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1995.
 * Heidi Beirich and Bob Moser, "America's Newspaper?: The Washington Times has a long record of hyped stories, shoddy reporting and failure to correct errors", Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center, undated (circa 2002).
 * "Canada Lynx Survey: Unauthorized Hair Samples Submitted for Analysis." Statement of Ronald Malfi, Acting Managing Director, Office of Special Investigations. US GAO Publication GAO-02-496T, March 6, 2002.
 * Paul Tolme, "The Washington Times' Hair-Raising Tall Tale Lynx fur "hoax" story shows the power of right-wing media, Extra!, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, May/June 2002.
 * Frank Ahrens, "Moon Speech Raises Old Ghosts as the Times Turns 20", Washington Post, May 23, 2002.
 * Wesley Pruden,"Fear and Loathing on the Potomac: The Washington Times at Twenty", Heritage Lecture No 757, August 15, 2002.
 * Wayne Madsen, "Moon Shadow:The Rev, Bush & North Korea", CounterPunch, January 14, 2003.
 * "Engineering a scandal: How the Washington Times Manipulated the Lynx Story", Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), undated, accessed December 9, 2003. PEER has created a webpage with links to the various uinvestigations rebutting the Washington Times claims.
 * Charles Babington and Alan Cooperman, "The Rev. Moon Honored at Hill Reception", June 23, 2004.
 * Robert Parry, "Money, Media & the Mess in America", Consortium News, January 28, 2005.
 * "On the pages of Wesley Pruden's Washington Times, the South rises again", Media Matters for America, June 30, 2005.
 * George Archibald, "Can The Washington Times Survive?", George Archibald (Blog), December 21, 2006.
 * George Archibald, "Unhinged," GeorgeArchibald (Blog), February 28, 2007.
 * Bill Berkowitz, "Moon waning in Washington?", Media Transparency, April 12, 2007.
 * "Times Men Pruden and Coombs Welcome Postie Solomon", U.S. News & World Report, March 26, 2008.