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The Washington Times

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File:WashingtonTimeslogo.gif
File:The Washington Times front page.jpg
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)News World Communications
EditorWesley Pruden
Founded1982
Political alignmentNeutral news coverage
Center-right opinion
HeadquartersWashington, D.C.
Websitewww.washtimes.com

The Washington Times[1] 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 Sunday 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 yearly 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]

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] The Times was also President Ronald Reagan's preferred newspaper.

Liberals tend to be much less enthusiastic. Salon.com [4], [5] and The Daily Howler [6] 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]

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 Wesley 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. (NWC). 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. NWC published Insight Magazine and The World & I until they were closed in 2004, and continues to publish the 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 is described by the Columbia Journalism Review as "the media arm of Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church" [8]. The Unification Church calls Moon the "founder" of the Times. In 1997, on the 15th anniversary of the founding of the paper, Rev. Moon gave an address to staff members that began:

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]

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]). In 2002, Columbia Journalism Review suggested Moon had sunk nearly $2 billion into the Times[11]. Ads fill an average of 35% of the Times' pages, compared to an industry average of 50-60%.[12]

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, its owner, noting that the paper's op-ed pages are often sympathetic to Unification movement concerns. 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][14] In 2002, during the 20th anniversary party for the Times, Rev. Moon declared: "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."[15]. Moon has also claimed to have direct influence on the Republican Party through his funding of the newspaper. The paper's first editor-in-chief, James Whelan, said that he 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.

Washington Times editors firmly deny any Church influence on their news coverage and editorial policy, or that they have any interest in proselytizing directly for the Unification Church. (Compare the Christian Science Monitor.) According to Wesley Pruden, the current editor-in-chief, the paper's editorial independence is guaranteed by a contract between him and the owners, and no editor in chief has been a member of the Unification Church. He estimated that no more than ten of the editorial staff of 230 are members of the Unification Church.[16]

Many of the positions taken by the Times are those that other Christian conservative organizations support, including religious freedom for Christians worldwide, discouraging the formation of gay families, and the prosecution of pornography and other violations of conservative values. 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

Religion

Sports

Computers

Metro

Former

Executive Officers and Editors - present and past

  • James Whelan - first editor-in-chief, 1982-1984
  • Tony Snow - editor of the editorial page, 1987-1990.
  • Josette Shiner - former managing editor

Notes

  1. ^ 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. Nor should it be considered the successor to the Washington Star, which closed in 1981, well before the Washington Times began in in 1982. The Washington Post bought the equipment and plant of the Star. The Times purchased part of the computer system used by the Star, which it replaced soon afterward.


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