May 29, 2002

2:12 PM

Moon Speech Raises Old Ghosts as the Times Turns 20 One of my favorite charlatans helps to bring back memories of the good old days that his moonie organization is trying to put behind them in order to appear "repsectable." But then the article published by the town's rival paper.
posted by Postroad (12 comments total)

Wow, I forgot they were owned by those wackos.

Shame on me.
posted by hadashi at 2:55 PM on May 29, 2002

wow, i don't think I ever knew. That's pretty freaky.

(shame on me X 2 I guess...)
posted by mdn at 3:06 PM on May 29, 2002

I'm looking forward to the Times sticking the Post's editorial policies under the same microscope to which the Post just subjected them.
posted by ljromanoff at 5:43 PM on May 29, 2002

Isn't it reassuring to know that Rev. Moon's counterpart, Lyndon Larouche, is now "a lone voice in the desert of American thinking on the Middle East"? LaRouche and Moon must be two men of substance, because Google doesn't turn up any crackpots with large budgets" out there.
posted by sheauga at 5:46 PM on May 29, 2002

Moon has also acquired United Press International (which prompted the doyenne of the Washington press corps, Helen Thomas, to quit). The staffers there seem to be, like at the Times, hardworking, not necessarily ideological reporters who either have little choice career wise or believe they can rise above the influence of their publisher. Semi-pro blogger Ken Layne worked there and sometimes mentions people who work there today.

Liberal bloggers tend to sniff at both sources, though I find that they are generally professional in news articles, even if there is an obvious attempt to "un-PC" wire stories and the like; and they tend to report stories that others don't, which has some value.

I think it's unfortunate that they can't strive for higher quality, though maybe the publisher has something to do with how much they can move towards a more populist center. As long as they only sell 1/8 as many papers as the Post they won't be able to afford to make the paper more than a gadfly.

Now, the LA Examiner and NY Sun, on the other hand, are starting out with crack staffs. I predict that if either one can carve out a niche in its local advertising market (because almost all papers, in the end, survive on bread-and-butter revenue streams like hte classifieds), both papers have an excellent chance at outclassing the WT in very short order.
posted by dhartung at 5:58 PM on May 29, 2002

Hmm, I clicked on this link and what did I see? A great big flash ad for the military-industrial killplex (F-22 Raptor - Let freedom ring and cost hundreds of billions!) from a supposedly liberal newspaper.

I kinda like the Washington Times, not only for the fact that they make the radical right look like a bunch of fools, but they actually cover some important stories that the mainstream press ignores.

Oh yeah, can we ban the term "pro" or "semi-pro" when describing webloggers? There's no such thing.
posted by mark13 at 7:08 PM on May 29, 2002

I could name at least one active MeFite who works at the Moonie paper.

But why speak for her?
posted by NortonDC at 7:57 PM on May 29, 2002

Moon owning newspapers bothers me... but you know, it doesn't bother anyone that the Christian Science Monitor is owned by a Christian Science church. Christian Science is no less wacky than the Unification Church, perhaps more so, although it's been around longer, and perhaps has more of the 'verisimilitude of age'. Although it has less national recognition than the big city dailies, the Monitor is highly respected among journalists. Everyone was highly suspicious of the Times when it began to publish, but besides being an editorially conservative paper, I don't think there have been any credible accusations that it slants its news coverage towards its owners' religious interests any more than the Monitor does.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 8:18 PM on May 29, 2002

mark13, Ken Layne has over a decade of experience in journalism. He is a blogger, but he is also a professional journalist. Do you have a better way to describe the combination? Or are you just expressing a prejudice?
posted by dhartung at 6:13 AM on May 30, 2002

Slithy_Tove,
There's a great difference between the Times and the Monitor. First the Monitor doesn't try to conceal it's source and mission and second the Monitor doesn't engage in political smear campaigns. As for the reputation of the Moonie Times, read David Brock's account of what employment there is about if you truly are interested in becoming enlightened about that rag.

As an aside, why would Jesus reincarnate need a paper to get his message out? I thought the Bible said "All would know and acknowledge Him." Well, I'm not knowing or acknowledging yet...
posted by nofundy at 8:12 AM on May 30, 2002

I don't know any MeFites who work at the Moonie paper. I know one who works for UPI, however. She has her own ideas about the similarities and the differences between TWT and UPI, but would not wish to elaborate in a forum like MeFi. Other than to note that she becomes extremely distressed when someone makes the mistake of thinking she works for the paper, rather than the wire.

On the other hand, she would respond to nofundy's post by saying she's never seen the Times try to hide their "source." The Times has hung poster-sized color versions of notable front pages from the last two decades up in their lobby, in celebration of their 20th anniversary. You could go there yourself to look and see that the very first paper they ever printed carried a front-page piece stating that they are ultimately owned by the Unification Church. That's never been a secret, not even an open one.

As for their "mission" ... the first thing that comes to mind would be the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but that's so two-and-a-half years ago. *shrug*
posted by Sapphireblue at 8:43 AM on May 30, 2002

nofundy: does anyone believe David Brock anymore, about anything?
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:17 AM on May 30, 2002