The Washington Times

The Washington Times is an American daily newspaper.

It was founded in 1982 by Sun Myung Moon and other members of the Unification Church as a conservative alternative to the Washington Post. March 31, 2007 its circulation was 102 351 copies, about one-seventh edition of its main competitor, the Washington Post.

Motivation for the creation and operation

The Times is a publication of News World Communications, which is described by the Columbia Journalism Review as "the media arm of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church ." The Washington Post was one of the main critics of the conservative anti-communism of Moon in the early 1980s and after the bankruptcy of the Washington Stars, the only daily newspaper in the U.S. capital. Moon recognized the benefit of the media in the service of his Church, as he explained later, in December 2000: "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 did begin shoulderstand movement and activity in the United States, Because The Washington Times and UPI are headquartered there. Once we establish_link our organization in the United States, it can be expanded to the world without much alteration. "

By 2006, the publisher had losses amounting to three billion U.S. dollars suffered in order to spread the conservative message of the Times can, losses were replaced by the Unification Church in the form of subsidies.

Political tendency

The Times is usually classified as politically conservative. Along with Fox News Channel and talk radio it is exemplified for the conservative media of the United States.

According to the founder of the newspaper, she should combat communism and be a conservative alternative to his view to liberal / social-liberal Washington Post. The former editor of the Washington Times (1992-2008), Wesley Pruden, associates the newspaper as a conservative in the story selection and editorial, but she was not eager to write directly conservative stories.

According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the credibility of the newspaper is often questioned. Thus, analysis of articles published in which they accuse the newspaper fatal errors about Salon.com and The Daily Howler. The former conservative Washington Times journalist and media critic David Brock wrote that journalistic ethics in the Washington Times practically did not exist. From the conservative side, however, the newspaper received some praise, as expressed about Ronald Reagan in 1997 that Americans thanks to the Washington Times would know the truth.