The Washington Times
The Washington Times logo The Washington Times[1] (http://www.allaboutall.info/article/The_Washington_Times#endnote_Confusion) is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. On Sundays its masthead reads The Sunday Times, a nod to the longstanding practice of The Times of London. The paper also calls itself America's Newspaper.
As of March 31, 2005, the Times had an average daily circulation of 103,017, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. This is dwarfed by the 751,871 held by the Washington Post, although its readership grew nearly 3% in 2004, while the Post's dropped 2.7%.
History
The Times was founded in 1982 by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (Unification Church), to be a conservative alternative to the larger and older Washington Post. To this day, it is widely perceived as maintaining a generally right-leaning editorial stance. The Unification Church has spent over $1 billion establishing the paper and subsidising its losses.
Throughout its existence it has been defined by its rivalry with the Post, which it was founded to challenge. The Times has won hundreds of journalism awards for its extensive news and opinion coverage of national and world politics, sports, and local affairs in the District of Columbia, as well as its photojournalism. However, as the "second paper" in town, its institutional culture is still often that of an underdog competing for attention and respect with its more prestigious and established rival. In many ways that has been a one-sided affair, with the Post seeing itself as competing with the New York Times, and preferring to ignore its cross-town rival. Each day on page 2 the Washington Times prints a list of all its front page headlines side by side with those of the Post, to let readers compare what stories each paper is emphasizing and how. Some see the Times' coverage of local politics in particular as stronger than the Post's; even 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."[2] (http://www.cjr.org/issues/2002/5/wash-stability.asp)
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. USA Today pioneered this approach to an even greater degree. 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.
Political leanings
The Times is generally seen as being politically conservative, particularly on the opinion pages. For example, it usually supports Republican candidates when making political endorsements. It is often cited along with the Fox News Channel and talk radio as epitomizing the conservative media.
Many conservatives, particularly inside the Beltway, are grateful to the Times. Paul Weyrich has praised the Washington Times as an "antidote" to its "liberal competitor": "The Washington Post became very arrogant and they just decided that they would 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." [3] (http://www.mediachannel.org/originals/moontranscript.shtml) The Times was also President Ronald Reagan's preferred newspaper.
Liberals tend to be much less enthusiastic. Salon.com [4] (http://www.salon.com/politics/col/spinsanity/2002/09/05/nea/index_np.html), [5] (http://www.salon.com/politics/col/spinsanity/2002/09/18/nea/print.html) and The Daily Howler [6] (http://tinyurl.com/azgbt) have published scathing analyses of what they say 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, described 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." [7] (http://www.thinkingpeace.com/Lib/lib099.html)
The paper has attracted occasional controversy over its coverage of racially sensitive matters. Editor Robert Stacy McCain has drawn fire from gay activist Michelangelo Signorile and the Southern Poverty Law Center for his criticism of Abraham Lincoln and apparent sympathies toward the Confederacy in the Civil War. Award-winning Times columnist Samuel Francis was fired by editor in chief Wes Pruden after speaking at a conference hosted by American Renaissance, a "pro-white" group, essentially ending his mainstream journalistic career.
Relationship to the Unification Church
The Times is the flagship publication of News World Communications, Inc., which also published, among others, Insight Magazine, The World & I (until the latter two were closed in 2004), and The Washington Times National Weekly Edition (a tabloid compilation, designed for subscribers outside the metropolitan area, of the previous week's published Washington Times stories). NWC also owns UPI. NWC was founded by the Rev. Moon, and some of its officials are members of the Unification Church he leads, a fact that has drawn some criticism and controversy.
Most sources say that Rev. Sun Myung Moon founded the Washington Times and its affiliated publications, and there is a widespread assumption that they are owned directly by the Church; NWC is described by the Columbia Journalism Review as "the media arm of Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church" [8] (http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/newsworld.asp). The Unification Church calls Moon the "founder" of the Times; in his own words:
- "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. Meanwhile, I waged a lonely struggle, facing enormous obstacles and scorn as I dedicated my whole heart and energy to enable The Washington Times to grow as a righteous and responsible journalistic institution." [9] (http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon97/sm970617.htm)
The Unification Church has been willing to run the paper at a loss to provide a political voice for the conservative right. 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"[10] (http://www.unification.net/1991/911223.html)). In 2002, Columbia Journalism Review suggested Moon had sunk nearly $2 billion into the Times[11] (http://www.cjr.org/issues/2002/5/wash-chinni.asp). Ads fill an average of 35% of the Times' pages, compared to an industry average of 50-60%.[12] (http://www.cjr.org/issues/2002/5/wash-chinni.asp)
Critics of the Unification Church claim that operation of the Times is part of an attempt by the Unification Church to gain political influence in Washington, D.C.; to back up this claim, they also refer to the purchase of the UPI newswire service by the Church in 2001 -- a move that gives the Unification Church a press seat on Air Force One.
Editorial independence
Several critics have claimed that the Times is little better than a mouthpiece for the Unification Church, noting that the paper's op-ed pages are often sympathetic to Unification movement concerns. Washington Times editors firmly deny any Church influence on their news coverage and editorial policy. Despite being owned by the Unification Church, the Times claims to be independent of the Church, and claims not to propagate the Church's teachings directly. (Compare Christian Science Monitor.) The Times is in favor of many topics other Christian conservative organizations support, including religious freedom for Christians worldwide and a dislike of government interference in family life, except to discourage the formation of gay families, to prosecute pornography and other violations of their values. The Times states that it does not proselytize directly for the Unification Church.
Times critics such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting assert significant influence by the Church on the paper and give the Church significant credit (or blame) for the Times' actions. [13] (http://www.fair.org/media-outlets/washington-times.html)[14] (http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon97/sm970617.htm) The paper's first publisher, James Whelan, resigned rather than accepting what he saw as church interference with his operation of the paper. "I have blood on my hands," he declared. The paper's current editor says Whelan was fired because he was difficult to work with and other staffers were threatening to quit because of this.
On the anniversary of the founding of the paper Rev. Moon gave a theological address to staff members that begins:
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. Meanwhile, I waged a lonely struggle, facing enormous obstacles and scorn as I dedicated my whole heart and energy to enable The Washington Times to grow as a righteous and responsible journalistic institution.[15] (http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon97/sm970617.htm)
And during the 2002 anniversary party for the Times, Moon declared: "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."[16] (http://www.cjr.org/issues/2002/5/wash-chinni.asp)
While Times reporters have prided themselves on their independence from the church's position, this has occasionally put them at odds with the founder's claims of having direct influence on the Republican Party via his extravagant funding of the newspaper. Sometimes, however, the paper has been at odds with the church's position. For example, on March 3, 2003, the lead editorial declared: "The time has come for the president to publicly declare that it is the decision of the United States government to lead an invasion of Iraq with the intent to change the regime." Members and observers of the Unification Church note that this is counter to the official church position, which opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Notable current and former contributors
Writers
News
Opinion
Sports
- Dan Daly
- Thom Loverro
- Tom Knott
Computers
Metro
- Adrienne T. Washington
- Tom Knott
- Fred Reed (police beat, later took on a broader purview)
Former
Executive Officers and Editors - past and present
Notes
- ^ The paper should not be confused with a previously existing paper of the same name established in 1893, which later became the Washington Times-Herald, and, still later, in 1954, was purchased by the Washington Post. Today's Washington Times was founded in 1982, and has more ties with the former Washington Star, whose equipment and plant it bought, than with the Times-Herald.
External links
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