The Washington Times

History

1980s

The Washington Times was founded May 17, 1982, by News World Communications, a New York City-based international media conglomerate associated with the Unification Church, which also owns United Press International (UPI) and newspapers in Japan, South America, and South Korea. The Washington Times lost a great deal of money in the early years of its existence and relied on the Unification Church's income from Japan to subsidize it.

Bo Hi Pak, chief aide to Unification Church founder and leader Sun Myung Moon, was the founding president and founding chairman of the board. Moon asked Richard L. Rubenstein, a rabbi and college professor who had written on the Holocaust, to serve on the board of directors. The newspaper's first editor and publisher was James R. Whelan.

The Washington Times was founded one year after The Washington Star, a Washington, D.C. daily newspaper, went out of business, leaving the city with The Washington Post as its only daily newspaper. A large percentage of the newspaper's news staff came from the Star.

Unusual among daily newspapers when The Washington Times was founded, the newspaper published full-color front pages in all its sections and color elements throughout. It also used ink that it advertised as being less likely to come off on the reader's hands than the type used by The Washington Post. At its start, it had 125 reporters, 25 percent of whom were members of the Unification Church of the United States.

President Ronald Reagan read The Washington Times every day during his presidency. In 1997, he said: "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."

After a brief editorship under Smith Hempstone, Arnaud de Borchgrave, a former UPI and Newsweek reporter, became executive editor, serving from 1985 to 1991. Borchgrave was credited with encouraging energetic reporting by staff but was known to make unorthodox journalistic decisions. During his tenure, The Washington Times mounted a fundraising drive for Contra rebels in Nicaragua and offered rewards for information leading to the arrest of Nazi war criminals.

1990s

In 1991, Moon said he had spent between $900 million and $1 billion on The Washington Times. By 2002, Moon had spent between $1.7 billion and $2 billion, according to different estimates.

Wesley Pruden, previously a correspondent and then a managing editor of The Washington Times, was named executive editor in 1991. During his editorship, the paper took a strongly conservative and nativist editorial stance.

In 1992, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung gave his first and only interview with the Western news media to The Washington Times reporter Josette Sheeran, who later became executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme.

In 1992, The Washington Times had one-eighth the circulation of The Washington Post (100,000 compared to 800,000) and two-thirds of its subscribers subscribed to both papers. In 1994, it introduced a weekly national edition, which was published in a tabloid format and distributed nationally. U.S. President George H. W. Bush encouraged the political influence of The Washington Times and other Unification Church movement activism in support of American foreign policy.

In 1997, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which is critical of U.S. and Israeli policies, praised The Washington Times and its sister publication, The Middle East Times, for what it called their objective and informative coverage of Islam and the Middle East, while criticizing The Washington Times for its generally pro-Israel editorial positions. The Report suggested that these newspapers and The Christian Science Monitor, each owned by religious institutions, were less influenced by pro-Israel pressure groups than corporate-owned newspapers.

2000s

In 2002, at an event held to celebrate The Washington Times' 20th anniversary, Moon said, "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God" and "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."

In 2004, David Ignatius, a correspondent for The Washington Post, reported that Chung Hwan Kwak, a leader in the Unification Church, wanted The Washington Times to "support international organizations such as the United Nations and to campaign for world peace and interfaith understanding." This, Ignatius wrote, created difficulties for Pruden and some of The Washington Times' columnists. Ignatius also mentioned the Unification Church movement's reconciliatory attitude towards North Korea, which at the time included joint business ventures, and Kwak's advocacy for greater understanding between the U.S. and the Islamic world as issues of contention. Ignatius predicted that conservatives in Congress and the George W. Bush administration would support Pruden's position over Kwak's.

In 2006, Moon's son, Hyun Jin Moon, president and CEO of News World Communications, dismissed managing editor Francis "Fran" Coombs following accusations of racist editorializing. Coombs had made some racist and sexist comments, for which he was sued by other employees at The Washington Times.

In January 2008, Pruden retired, and John F. Solomon, who worked with the Associated Press and had most recently been head of investigative reporting and mixed media development at The Washington Post, was appointed executive editor.

A month later, The Washington Times changed some of its style guide to conform more to what was becoming mainstream media usage. It 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. It also decided to stop using "Hillary" when referring to then U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, and the word "marriage" in the expression "gay marriage" would no longer appear in quotes in the newspaper. These policy changes drew criticism from some conservatives. Prospect magazine attributed The Washington Times' apparent political moderation to differences of opinion over the United Nations and North Korea, and wrote, "The Republican right may be losing its most devoted media ally."

2010s

In July 2010, the Unification Church issued a letter protesting the direction The Washington Times was taking and urging closer ties with it. In August 2010, a deal was made to sell it to a group more closely related to the movement. Editor-in-chief Sam Dealey said that this was a welcome development among the Times' staff.

In November 2010, Moon and a group of former editors purchased The Washington Times from News World Communications for $1. This ended a conflict within the Moon family that had been threatening to shut down the paper completely. In June 2011, Ed Kelley, formerly of The Oklahoman, was hired as editor overseeing both news and opinion content.

In March 2011, The Washington Times announced that some former staffers would be rehired and that the paper would bring back its sports, metro, and life sections.

In 2012, Douglas D. M. Joo stepped down as senior executive, president, and chairman. Times president Tom McDevitt took his place as chairman, and Larry Beasley was hired as the company's new president and chief executive officer.

In March 2013, The Washington Times partnered with Herring Networks to create a new conservative cable news channel, One America News Network (OAN), which began broadcasting in mid‑2013.

In July 2013, The Washington Times hired David Keene, former president of the National Rifle Association and chairman of the American Conservative Union, to serve as its opinion editor.

In September 2013, Solomon returned as editor and vice president of content and business development. Solomon's tenure was marked by a focus on profitability.

In September 2015, the newspaper had its first profitable month, ending a streak of monthly financial losses over the paper's first 33 years. In December 2015, Solomon left for Circa News.

The Washington Times opinion editor Charles Hurt was one of Trump's earliest supporters in Washington, D.C.

2020s

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Washington Times received $1.5 million in federal-backed small business loans from Citibank through the Paycheck Protection Program, which helped retain 91 employees. The loan was forgiven. During the 2024 presidential election, The Washington Times endorsed Trump for election.

Reactions

In the 1980s, reporters for The Washington Times visited imprisoned then South African activist Nelson Mandela, who wrote about the newspaper in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. He said, "They seemed less intent on finding out my views than on proving that I was a Communist and a terrorist. All of their questions were slanted in that direction, and when I reiterated that I was neither a Communist nor a terrorist, they attempted to show that I was not a Christian either by asserting that the Reverend Martin Luther King never resorted to violence."

The Washington Times holds a conservative political stance. In 1995, the Columbia Journalism Review wrote that The Washington Times "is like no major city daily in America in the way that it wears its political heart on its sleeve. No major paper in America would dare be so partisan." In 2002, The Washington Post reported that the newspaper "was established by Moon to combat communism and be a conservative alternative to what Moon perceived as the liberal leanings of The Washington Post. Since then, the paper has fought to prove its editorial independence, trying to demonstrate that it is neither a "Moonie paper" nor a booster of the political right but rather a fair and balanced reporter of the news."

In October 2002, veteran Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee complimented The Washington Times, saying, "I see them get some local stories that I think the Post doesn't have and should have had." In 2007, Mother Jones reported that The Washington Times had become "essential reading for political news junkies" soon after its founding, and described it as a "conservative newspaper with close ties to every Republican administration since Reagan."

In August 2008, in a Harper's essay, American historian Thomas Frank linked The Washington Times to the modern American conservative movement, saying: "There is even a daily newspaper—The Washington Times—published strictly for the movement's benefit, a propaganda sheet whose distortions are so obvious and so alien that it puts one in mind of those official party organs one encounters when traveling in authoritarian countries."

In January 2011, conservative commentator Paul Weyrich said, "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."

Awards

In 2013, The Washington Times won two Sigma Delta Chi Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for excellence in journalism, including "Professional Journalists for Deadline Reporting (Daily Circulation of 1–50,000)" and "Investigative Reporting (Daily Circulation 1–50,000)" .

In 2014, Thom Loverro, lead sports columnist for The Washington Times, won a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Sports Column Writing.

In 2018, Guy Taylor and Dan Boylan, reporters for The Washington Times, won Honorable Mentions for the 31st annual Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency.

In 2019, The Washington Times advertising department won first and third place in the VPA News and Advertising contest in the Special Sections (standalone section non-slick cover) category. Outstanding design and creative artwork for the Qatar and Rolling Thunder Special Section covers landed the department the award.

In 2020, Alexander Hunter, designer and editorial illustrator for The Washington Times, won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism.

Controversies

General controversies

Some former employees, including Whelan, have insisted that The Washington Times was always under Moon's control. Whelan, whose contract guaranteed editorial autonomy, left the paper in 1984 when the owners refused to renew his contract. Three years later, editorial page editor William P. Cheshire and four of his staff resigned, charging that, at the explicit direction of Sang Kook Han, a top official of the Unification Church, executive editor Arnaud de Borchgrave had stifled editorial criticism of political repression in South Korea under President Chun Doo-hwan.

In 1982, The Washington Times refused to publish film critic Scott Sublett's negative review of the movie Inchon, which was also sponsored by the Unification Church.

In 1988, The Washington Times published a misleading story suggesting that Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis had sought psychiatric help, and included a quote from Dukakis' sister-in-law saying "it is possible" he visited a psychiatrist. However, The Washington Times clipped the full quote by the sister-in-law, which was: "It's possible, but I doubt it."

Reporter Peggy Weyrich quit in 1991 after one of her articles about Anita Hill's testimony in the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nominee hearings was rewritten to depict Hill as a "fantasizer". During the presidency of Bill Clinton The Washington Times reporting on his alleged sex scandals was often picked up by other, more respected, news media which contributed to enhanced public awareness of the topic, and eventually to Clinton's impeachment. In 1999 the Senate voted to acquit Clinton, allowing him to complete his second term as president.

In a 1997 column in The Washington Times, Frank Gaffney falsely alleged that a seismic incident in Russia was a nuclear detonation at that nation's Novaya Zemlya test site, which would have meant that Russia had violated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTB). Subsequent scientific analysis of the Novaya Zemlya event showed that it was an earthquake. Reporting on the allegation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists observed that following its publication: "fax machines around Washington, D.C. and across the country poured out pages detailing Russian duplicity. They came from Frank Gaffney."

Science coverage

The Washington Times has promoted climate change denial. Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, characterizes The Washington Times as a prominent outlet that propagates "climate change disinformation". Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, and Erik M. Conway, historian of science at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, wrote in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt that The Washington Times has given the public a false sense that the science of anthropogenic climate change was in dispute by giving disproportionate coverage of fringe viewpoints and by preventing scientists from rebutting coverage in The Washington Times. The Washington Times reprinted a column by Steve Milloy criticizing research of climate change in the Arctic without disclosing Milloy's financial ties to the fossil fuel industry.

In 1993, The Washington Times published articles purporting to debunk climate change. It headlined its story about the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change: "Under the deal, the use of coal, oil and other fossil fuel in the United States would be cut by more than one-third by 2002, resulting in lower standards of living for consumers and a long-term reduction in economic growth."

During the Climatic Research Unit email controversy (also known as "Climategate") in 2009 in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, The Washington Times wrote in an editorial: "these revelations of fudged science should have a cooling effect on global-warming hysteria and the panicked policies that are being pushed forward to address the unproven theory." Eight committees investigated the controversy and found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. In 2010, The Washington Times published an article claiming that February 2010 snow storms "Undermin[e] The Case For Global Warming One Flake At A Time". A 2014 The Washington Times editorial mocked the "global warming scam" and asserted: "The planetary thermometer hasn't budged in 15 years. Wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes and other 'extreme' weather events are at normal or below-normal levels. Pacific islands aren't submerged. There's so much ice the polar bears are celebrating." The Washington Times cited a blog post in support of these claims; PolitiFact fact-checked the claims in the blog post and concluded it was "pants-on-fire" false. The Washington Times later said that a NASA scientist claimed that global warming was on a "hiatus" and that NASA had found evidence of global cooling; Rebecca Leber of The New Republic said that the NASA scientist in question said the opposite of what The Washington Times claimed.

Allegations of racism

Under Pruden's editorship (1992–2008), The Washington Times regularly printed excerpts from racist hard-right publications, including VDARE and American Renaissance, and from Bill White, leader of the American National Socialist Workers' Party, in its Culture Briefs section.

In 2013, Columbia Journalism Review reported that under Pruden's editorship The Washington Times was: "a forum for the racialist hard right, including white nationalists, neo-Confederates, and anti-immigrant scare mongers." Between 1998 and 2004, the Times covered every biennial American Renaissance conference, hosted by the white supremacist New Century Foundation. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, "the paper's coverage of these events—which are hotbeds for holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, and eugenicists—was stunningly one sided", and favorably depicted the conference and attendees. In 2009, journalist David Neiwert wrote that it championed, "various white-nationalist causes emanating from the neo-Confederate movement (with which, until a recent housecleaning, two senior editors had long associations.)"

A page in The Washington Times' Sunday edition was devoted to the American Civil War, on which the Confederacy was several times described with admiration. In 1993, Pruden gave an interview to the neo-Confederate magazine Southern Partisan, which has been called "arguably the most important neo-Confederate periodical" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, where he said: "Every year I make sure that we have a story in the paper about any observance of Robert E. Lee's birthday." Pruden said, "And the fact that it falls around Martin Luther King's birthday," to which a Southern Partisan interviewer interjected, "Makes it all the better," with Pruden finishing, "I make sure we have a story. Oh, yes."

The Washington Times employed Sam Francis, a white nationalist, as a columnist and editor, beginning in 1991 after he was chosen by Pat Buchanan to take over his column.

In 1995, Francis resigned or was forced out after Dinesh D'Souza reported on racist comments that Francis made at a conference hosted by American Renaissance the previous year. At the conference, Francis called on whites to: "reassert our identity and our solidarity, and we must do so in explicitly racial terms through the articulation of a racial consciousness as whites... The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people."

Coverage of Barack Obama

In 2007 The Washington Times' companion news magazine Insight on the News, also called just Insight, published a story which claimed that someone on the campaign staff of American presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton had leaked a report to one of Insight's reporters which said that Obama had "spent at least four years in a so-called madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia". Insight's editor, Jeff Kuhner, also claimed that the source said that the Clinton campaign was "preparing an accusation that her rival Senator Barack Obama had covered up a brief period he had spent in an Islamic religious school in Indonesia when he was six." Clinton denied the allegations. When interviewed by The New York Times, Kuhner refused to name the person said to be the reporter's source to The New York Times.

Insight's story was reported on first by conservative talk radio and Fox News Channel, and then by The New York Times and other major newspapers. CNN reporter John Vause visited State Elementary School Menteng 01, a secular public school which Obama had attended for one year after attending a Roman Catholic school for three, and found that each student received two hours of religious instruction per week in his or her own faith. He was told by Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the school, "This is a public school. We don't focus on religion. In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment." Students at Besuki wore Western clothing, and the Chicago Tribune described the school as "so progressive that teachers wore miniskirts and all students were encouraged to celebrate Christmas".

Interviews by Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press found that students of all faiths have been welcome there since before Obama's attendance. Akmad Solichin, the vice principal of the school, told Pickler: "The allegations are completely baseless. Yes, most of our students are Muslim, but there are Christians as well. Everyone's welcome here ... it's a public school."

In 2008, The Washington Times published a column by Frank Gaffney that promoted the false conspiracy theories which asserted that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and was courting the "jihadist vote". Gaffney also published pieces in 2009 and 2010 promoting the false assertion that Obama is a Muslim.

In a 2009 column entitled "'Inner Muslim' at work in Cairo", Pruden wrote that President Obama was the: "first president without an instinctive appreciation of the culture, history, tradition, common law and literature whence America sprang. The genetic imprint writ large in his 43 predecessors is missing from the Obama DNA." In another 2009 column, Pruden wrote that Obama had "no natural instinct or blood impulse" for what America was about because he was "sired by a Kenyan father" and "born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World." Pruden's columns stirred controversy, leading The Washington Times to assign David Mastio, its deputy editor, to edit his work.

Allegations of Islamophobia

Frank Gaffney, a weekly contributor for The Washington Times from the late 1990s to 2016, was regularly accused of promoting Islamophobic and anti-Muslim views. According to John Esposito, a Professor of Religion and International Affairs and of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, Gaffney's "editorial track record in The Washington Times is long on accusation and short on supportive evidence." In columns for The Washington Times, Gaffney helped to popularize conspiracy theories that Islamic terrorists were infiltrating the Bush administration, the conservative movement and the Obama administration.

In 2015, The Washington Times published a column describing refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War as an "Islamic Trojan Horse" conducting a "'jihad' by another name".

In 2016 the Muslim advocacy group Council on American–Islamic Relations listed The Washington Times among media outlets it said "regularly demonstrates or supports Islamophobic themes." In 1998, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram described the editorial policy of The Washington Times as "rabidly anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel."

Staff

Editors-in-chief

James R. Whelan (1982–1984)

Smith Hempstone (1984–1986)

Arnaud de Borchgrave (1986–1992)

Wesley Pruden (1992–2008)

John F. Solomon (2008–2009) (2013–2015)

Sam Dealey (2010)

Ed Kelley (2011–2012)

David S. Jackson (2012–2013)

Christopher Dolan (present as of 2024)

Managing editors

Josette Shiner (1992–1997)

Francis Coombs (?–2008)

Cathy Gaynor (present as of 2024)

Opinion editors

Ann Crutcher (1984–1985)

William P. Cheshire (1985–1987)

Tony Snow (1987–1990)

Tod Lindberg (1991–1998)

Tony Blankley (2002–2007)

Richard Miniter (2009)

Brett Decker (2009–2013)

Wesley Pruden (2013)

David Keene (2014–2016)

Charles Hurt (2016–present)

Current commentary contributors

Jennifer Harper ("Inside the Beltway" columnist)

Charles Hurt (opinion editor and columnist)

Mark Kellner (faith and family reporter)

Robert H. Knight (opinion columnist)

Stephen Moore (opinion columnist)

Everett Piper (opinion columnist)

Cal Thomas (opinion columnist)

Former contributors

George Archibald (congressional, political, United Nations, and education reporter)

Bruce Bartlett (opinion columnist)

David Brooks (editorial writer, film reviewer)

Amanda Carpenter (columnist)

Ben Carson (opinion columnist)

Monica Crowley (online opinion editor and columnist)

Dave Fay (editor and journalists, deceased)

Bruce Fein (opinion columnist)

Sam Francis (editor and columnist, deceased)

Frank Gaffney (columnist)

Madison Gesiotto Gilbert (opinion columnist)

Michael Hayden (opinion columnist)

Nat Hentoff (opinion columnist)

Shirley A. Husar (opinion columnist)

Ernest Istook (opinion columnist)

Drew Johnson (columnist)

Tom Knott (sports columnist)

Larry Kudlow (economics columnist)

Jeff Kuhner (opinion columnist)

Willie Lawson (opinion columnist)

Tod Lindberg (opinion columnist)

Others

Julia Duin: Religion editor

Daniel Wattenberg: Arts and Entertainment editor