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C. Dolan: Address to Summit 2022, Session IV
Written by Chris Dolan, President and Executive Editor, The Washington Times
Friday, August 12, 2022
Address to Summit 2022 and Leadership Conference,
Seoul, Korea, August 11-15, 2022
Good afternoon and welcome. I know many of you have traveled far and wide to be here. I hope you depart in the coming days feeling fulfilled.
This summer we are celebrating 40 years since The Washington Times’s founding, and I’ve had the good fortune of working there for the last 21 of them.
During our fact-finding visit this week, I was reminded that The Washington Times is the product of War and Hope. On Monday, South Koreans will celebrate National Liberation Day, remembering the Allied victory that liberated the Korean peninsula from 35 years of Japanese rule. It is known as Gwangbokjeol (광복절; literally, “the day the light returned.” Their neighbors to the North also will celebrate, using a different term I will not try to pronounce.
Unfortunately, not that long after WW II ended, war erupted between the Koreas that divides the peninsula to this day: a socialist dictatorship to the North and a representative democratic republic to the south.
From that division emerged the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a religious leader whose experiences in and after the wars forged an undying commitment to the importance of the American experiment and its founding values, grounded in freedom of speech and religion—the antithesis of the controlling communism he despised.
So, in 1982, when The Washington Star folded, making the capital of the free world a one-paper town, and as the Cold War raged, the Rev. Moon stepped up and started The Washington Times.
Back then the Rev. Moon said and I quote:
“When Washington, the nation’s capital, ended up with one liberal newspaper, The Washington Post. I waited for some rich people with a lot of resources to come forward and publish a patriotic newspaper in Washington. Since no one did, I stood up and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ ”
Skeptics doubted that an upstart startup could last in the market, but 40 years later The Washington Times remains a strong voice dedicated to promoting freedom, faith and family. We’re determined to put the world at your doorstep every morning, and we never forget that we’re a guest in the reader’s home. We strive never to belittle a reader’s freedom, to mock their faith or ridicule their family.
The Times was founded to take on the greatest power of the mass media, the power to omit and ignore reporting and arguments it did not like.
Today, unfortunately, the threat remains. The old gatekeepers of big media and big business have been replaced and, in many cases, coopted by a growing “woke” ecosystem of Big Tech firms who limit or completely block access to information they disagree with or dislike, often under the guise of fact checks or misinformation labels, and overwhelmingly aimed at so-called conservative publications.
Thankfully, our ownership under the leadership of Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, Rev. Moon’s wife and the co-founder of the Universal Peace Federation, has never wavered during these turbulent times. She has remained committed to the role The Washington Times must play over the next 40 years: defending freedom, promoting family values and ensuring a robust, informed debate globally. She has remained committed to the hope that the light of good will prevail over the darkness of despotism and reunite this peninsula.
Thank you for your time and God bless.
To go to the World Summit 2022 Schedule page, click here.