Via Jim Romenesko, I see that that Washington Times editor Wes Pruden announced that he’s planning to step down in the next few years, so this seems like a good occasion to paw through a few of the skeletons in the closet of Washington’s influential conservative newspaper.

First, there’s its owner, the cult leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who (among other things) appears to have pressed the newspaper into promoting the dictatorial regime in North Korea, which he eventually enticed into lucrative business deals. And, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center and other sources, the staff isn’t any better. Pruden — the son of a leading segregationist — has repeatedly expressed sympathy with the Confederate cause, which is regularly featured in the newspaper, often in laudatory articles written by assistant editor Robert Stacy McCain, a member of a hate group that opposes racial intermarriage. And SPLC reports that Fran Coombs, the man who is reportedly being groomed for the editorship, has allowed his wife Marion Kester Coombs to publish at least 35 articles in the Times while also writing for white supremacist publications.

In addition, the Times is arguably the least reliable print outlet in elite journalism. At Spinsanity, I had my biggest run-in with the newspaper when I helped debunk the Times story which spawned the myth that the National Education Association told teachers not to blame Sept. 11 on Al Qaeda. I contacted Coombs for comment, but even after the story had been exposed as blatantly misleading, he would only say “We stand behind the story as reported and written.” And that was far from the only incident — in fact, we ended up publishing a huge number of articles about Times news reports or op-eds during the 3+ years Spinsanity was in existence.

As the blog TalkLeft noted, the latest incident came just last week when Bill Frist picked up on a classic misleading Times headline — “Gitmo called death camp” — to falsely accuse Dick Durbin of using the phrase to describe the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay (PDF). (Durbin never used those words.) Frist obviously didn’t realize that he needed to account for the spin built into almost every report in the newspaper.

So as we ponder the next generation of leadership at the Times, the question for conservatives is this: will they finally disavow this vile institution? Or will they cozy up to Moon and his racist minions for another twenty years?