In 1981, The Washington Star ceased publication after 128 years in the nation’s capital. The Star was the conservative counterweight to The Washington Post, which was so left-leaning it was nicknamed “Pravda on the Potomac” after Russia’s propaganda newspaper.
The new Reagan Administration deduced its policies would be hamstrung if Washington, D.C., were dominated by a single, politically hostile media giant. The White House even invited five leaders of conservative financial groups to discuss reviving The Star or creating another daily newspaper. But the leaders declined; The Star had been losing $35 million a year when its manager, Time Life Corp., declared its bankruptcy and closure. Making another newspaper in D.C. was deemed a financial folly.
That’s when Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Dr. Hak Ja Han, used their resources to launch and support The Washington Times, an independent paper they dedicated to fighting the dangers of communism and reviving American values.
Skeptics doubted that an upstart startup could last in the market, especially one with a skeleton staff housed in a former paper company warehouse on New York Avenue Northeast after The Post swooped in to buy The Star’s shuttered production plant.
But the paper’s founders had a simple but radical idea: that there was always room for a legitimate, professionally reported newspaper with an editorial page not ashamed to embrace traditional values, an outlet that would give each voice and viewpoint an honest hearing and a thorough, fairly reported vetting. A world capital such as Washington not only needed but also deserved more than one editorial voice, especially one deeply entwined with the prevailing liberal orthodoxy.
For The Washington Times’ founders, Mr. Moon and his wife, Mrs. Han, the idea for a new newspaper was both counterintuitive and blindingly obvious.
“When Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, ended up with only one very liberal newspaper, The Washington Post, we waited for some rich people with a lot of resources to come forward and publish a patriotic newspaper there,” Rev. Moon recalled shortly after the newspaper’s founding.
“Since no one did,” he added, “We stood up and said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
The obstacles to launching The Times were immense — there was no building, no presses, no publisher and few staff. Moreover, when Mr. Moon and Mrs. Han announced The Times on Jan. 1, 1982, they said that it must publish on March 1, 1982, 58 days later. This was to honor the momentous Korean Samil March 1 Independence Movement of 1919 — an event that Mrs. Han recalled her grandmother and mother, Jo Won-mo and her mother, Hong Sun-ae, who was five years old at the time, on her back. The 1919 event symbolized the hope of the liberation of the Korean people from oppression.
That oppression continued until the Allies won World War II and Korea was liberated. Tragically, due to the division of Korea at the 38th parallel, as agreed upon by the allies, the Soviet Union took control of North Korea.
Mrs. Han and her husband, being from the North, experienced the tyranny of communism directly, which steeled in their hearts, as Christians, a deep understanding that God-denying communism would never allow freedom of religion or any other freedom. This would eventually contribute to The Washington Times’ total commitment to expose and defeat communism.
The first paper—dubbed “Prototype Preview Edition”—was published on March 1, 1982, and The Washington Times officially premiered on May 17, 1982. It had a publisher’s statement, headlines such as “Reagan set to ban Libyan oil imports” and “U.S.-China ties at snapping point,” and a story about how the nation’s capital welcomed the birth of a new daily newspaper.
The Times’ first edition also carried an iconic image by Washington Star political cartoonist Gib Crockett depicting The Washington Times as the biblical David against The Washington Post’s Goliath.
Years later, Mrs. Han, leader of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), spoke about The Times while on a world tour and emphasized “that the global media must be moral, responsible and honest, and stand against atheistic ideologies like communism and tyranny. The pillars of The Times are freedom, family and faith.”
“A healthy, stable nation needs a conscientious, objective media to provide information, analysis, and commentary. When the media loses its professional standards, the nation suffers. That is why my husband and I have established many media companies centered on the highest standards of journalism,” she said in an address to the Universal Peace Federation’s International Conference on March 1, 2015.
In the wake of the news organization’s 43rd anniversary this month, Mrs. Han renewed her call for The Times to remain dedicated to its founding mission—not only to report but also to educate, inspire, and stand as a voice of truth in a world that has lost its compass.
When The Times debuted on May 17, 1982, Mrs. Han was eight months pregnant with Jeong Jin, their daughter and 14th child. Around forty days later, she and her husband would preside over the famous Madison Square Garden Holy Wedding of 2,075 Couples on July 1, 1982.
When the founders arrived in America in December 1971, they felt called to address the world’s biggest challenges. “The democratic world is facing an urgent crisis due to the threat of communism,” they said. We must invest everything to overcome this.”
When the religious leaders did revivals throughout the United States in the early seventies, many mayors welcomed them by giving them the “key to the city” and there was a wonderful response from the churches. But they knew that the most serious battle that America faced was to defeat God-denying communism. President Nixon was very clear about the dangers of communism, so when the Watergate scandal threatened his presidency, Rev. Moon and Mrs. Han organized rallies to offer a solution.
“Our movement published full-page statements, ‘America in Crisis: Answer to Watergate: Forgive, Love, Unite,’ in 21 leading newspapers,” Mrs. Han wrote in her memoir, “Mother of Peace.”
“This was not about forgiving President Nixon alone…but about forgiving, loving and uniting as a nation for the sake of the world,” she explained.
President Nixon sent them an invitation to meet him at the White House. “As members covered the White House in prayer, my husband counseled him to stand strong, confess any wrongdoing and call for national prayer, unity and revival,” Mrs. Han wrote.
She recalled that once the founders called for forgiving and supporting President Nixon to defeat communism to heal the divided country, the liberal media changed their position toward them, labeling the movement with pejoratives and attacking every aspect of their work.
Sadly, after Nixon’s resignation, communism spread rapidly throughout the world, underscoring the need for The Washington Times.
During The Times’ 43-year history, there were many challenges, but setbacks were never enough to stop their efforts. As Mrs. Han recalled in her memoir, “Mother of Peace,” she often thought of her grandmother in 1919 crying “Mansei, victory for ten thousand years” for the independence and salvation of Korea from Japanese occupation.
Such memories caused me to “burn with a youthful passion for saving humanity and building a peaceful world,” she wrote.
• Cheryl Wetzstein, a former reporter at The Washington Times and member of the Family Federation of World Peace and Unification, provided this story.
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