Outlet profile

Washington Times

U.S. right

Owned byOwned by Operations Holdings, Inc., through The Washington Times LLC and TWT Holdings, LLC; Operations Holdings is a subsidiary of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (the Unification Church), founded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon

FundingSubscriptions and advertising, supplemented historically by heavy subsidies from the Unification Church and its affiliated businesses; the paper has operated at a loss for much of its history and relied on church financial backing to continue publishing

On the administrationbroadly supportive

Background

The Washington Times was founded in 1982 by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, to provide a conservative alternative to The Washington Post in the nation's capital. It was published by News World Communications until ownership was reorganized in 2010 under new church-linked holding entities, following a period of internal Moon family disputes over control of the paper. The paper has never been profitable on its own and has depended on subsidies estimated over the decades at hundreds of millions of dollars from Unification Church-affiliated sources, a fact regularly cited by critics who question its editorial independence. Editorially, it has long been a reliable outlet for conservative and Republican-aligned commentary, including favorable coverage of Republican administrations and skeptical coverage of Democratic ones. It built a reputation in Washington political circles for influential opinion writers and for coverage valued by conservative officials and activists, even as its overall circulation and general-news reach have remained far smaller than major national papers. Its ownership by a religious movement founded by Moon, who was convicted of tax fraud in the U.S. in the 1980s, has remained a recurring point of scrutiny in profiles of the paper.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-09-24; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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