Pioneered the Independent Daily Media Revolution
The Washington Times, since its founding in 1982, has provided a ground-breaking alternative viewpoint in American media recognized for its investigative exclusives and extensive commentary section. Key accomplishments include:
- Providing an alternative voice: Established at the insistence of Sun Myung Moon in 1982, the paper was the first to offer a daily conservative perspective to counter the widely acknowledged liberal bias in the U.S. political-media culture.
- Hard-hitting journalism: The Times became known for its coverage of the Bill Clinton and Congressional scandals that shook Washington to the core. Its continuing investigative reporting pioneered the alternative media revolution on radio, cable, Internet and social media that is unique to the United States. Such coverage continues to this day with sections such as Waste, Fraud & Abuse in government.
- National security and foreign influence: The Times’ reporting and editorials were regarded by key figures in President Ronald Reagan’s Administration as critical to winning the ideological struggle against the Soviet Union. Coverage of Chinese intelligence and influence operations in theU.S. and its alarming military expansion based on the theft of American technology remains unrivaled by U.S. and international media.
- Securing exclusive interviews: A notable exclusive was the first and only interview with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung given to Western media in 1992. It was made possible by Rev. Moon’s courageous trip to Pyongyang more than 40 years after he had survived imprisonment, torture and hard labor inNorth Korea’s Heung Nam “death camp.
Sun Myung Moon’s media initiatives began in Tokyo, Japan in 1974 and extended to New York City two years later. His hands-off management style with all media properties nevertheless stemmed from his founding requirements of journalistic excellence and steadfast opposition to international communism and corruption in American governance and culture.
- On Election Day 1980, The News World of New York rolled off the presses with the top headline predicting “Reagan Landslide.” At a news conference that morning, Reagan held up the front page, an image carried across the country by television reports. When the votes were counted, the Republican had won 489 of 538 Electoral College votes, more than matching the bold prediction. The News World, renamed the New York Tribune in 1983, won national awards for investigative reporting and many awards from the NYC Press Club.
- The launch of The Washington Times was privately hailed by top Christian conservatives as a Godsend following the death of The Washington Star in 1981, leaving the Washington Post and its unchallenged hostility to most Reagan policies.
- A favorite of President Ronald Reagan, who insisted on reading The Washington Times first thing every morning at the WhiteHouse, the daily impacted the nation's capital by reporting stories on the daily news menu routinely ignored by the national press corps.
- During its first 10 years of publication, The Washington Times won more than 650 awards, including top honors from the Society of Newspaper Design andthe American Society of Newspaper Editors.
- The Times established itself as the alternative to The Washington Post and the dominant media culture at a critical juncture in the Cold War when communism seemed to be on the march, with the traditionalAmerican values in apparent retreat.
- These were the years when President Reagan pushed for aid to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua and the toppling of the Marxist Sandinista regime; aid to El Salvador while it was under siege by Soviet-backed leftist guerrillas; support for the Solidarity movement in Poland and development of a space-based Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars. ”Unlike the competition in the Washington press corps, The Times provided fulland fair coverage of these history-shaping initiatives.
- The Times consolidated its strengths in its second decade and with communism at last relegated to the ash heap of history. In the days before the Internet and cable news, its National Weekly Edition registered with a receptive audience outside the Beltway and overtook The Washington Post’s national weekly edition in circulation, helping to reshape the media landscape.
- The Times restored lost American newspaper ethics with editors’ insistence that “a newspaper editor has no friends” and “your ultimate responsibility is to your readers, not to your sources.”
- Investigative reporting by The Times on a succession of congressional scandals in the late 1980s and early 1990s contributed to the downfall of several powerful political figures, such as House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas and Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, and prompted the House’s severe reprimand of Rep. Barney Frank for using his public office to assist the sordid business of a live-in “call boy.”
- The voter backlash in 1992 against abuses of power and public trust at the House Post Office and House bank was fueled by numerous Times exclusives. That national revolt led to a turnover of 100 seats in the House.
- Bill Clinton’s scandals involving personal misconduct and long-rumored sexual dalliances were targeted early by The Times in 1991. Despite criticism from other news organizations, it never let go of that unfolding story including obstruction and false testimony that led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House in 1998.
- The Times' landmark exclusive in late 1993 thatClinton aides had removed Whitewater-related documents from the office of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr. on the night of his death led to the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate.
- “The Washington Times has become a must-read" the Washington Monthly concluded in a 1997 cover story. Why? “Not only because it occasionally breaks a really big story, but because The Times now offers a daily menu ofstraight, ground-breaking, essential news, often on subjects to which other outlets give short shrift.”
