The Washington Examiner is an American political journalism website and weekly magazine based in Washington, D.C. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Charity Media Group, which is owned by Philip Anschutz.

From 2005 to mid-2013, the Examiner published a daily tabloid-sized newspaper, distributed throughout the Washington, D.C. metro area. At the time, the newspaper mostly focused on local news and political commentary.^[3] The local newspaper ceased publication on June 14, 2013, and its content began to focus exclusively on national politics, switching its print edition from a daily newspaper to a weekly magazine format.^[4]

The Examiner is known for its conservative political stance and features many known conservative writers.^[5]

The publication now known as The Washington Examiner began its life as a handful of suburban news outlets known as the Journal Newspapers, distributed only in the suburbs of Washington: Montgomery Journal, Prince George's Journal, and Northern Virginia Journal.^[6] Philip Anschutz purchased the parent company, Journal Newspapers Inc., in October 2004.^[3][7][8] On February 1, 2005, the paper's name changed to The Washington Examiner, and it adopted a logo and format similar to those of another newspaper then owned by Anschutz, The San Francisco Examiner.^[6]

The Washington Examiner became increasingly influential in conservative political circles, hiring much of the talent from The Washington Times.^[9] The website DCist wrote in March 2013 "Despite the right-wing tilt of [the Examiner’s] editorial pages and sensationalist front-page headlines, it also built a reputation as one of the best local sections in D.C."^[10] The newspaper's local coverage also gained fame, including a write-up by The New York Times,^[11] for contributing to the arrest of more than 50 fugitives through a feature that each week spotlighted a different person wanted by law-enforcement agencies.

It was announced in March 2013 that the paper would stop its daily print edition in June and refocus on national politics, converting its print edition to a weekly magazine and continuing to publish its website.^[12] The new format was compared to that of The Hill.^[9][12] In December 2018, Clarity Media announced that the magazine would become a publicly available, expanded print magazine.^[13]

The magazine's publisher said in 2013 that it would now seek to distribute the magazine to at least "45,000 government, public affairs, advocacy, academia and political professionals."

^[10] The publisher also claimed the Examiner's readership is more likely to sign a petition, contact a politician, attend a political rally, or participate in a government advocacy group than those of Roll Call, Politico, or The Hill.^[14] According to its publisher the Examiner has a high-earning and highly educated audience, with 26 percent holding a master's or postgraduate degree and a large percentage earning over $500,000 annually, likely to be working in executive or senior management positions.^[14]

The Examiner has been described as and is widely regarded as conservative.^[5] When Anschutz first started the Examiner in its daily newspaper format, he envisioned creating a competitor to The Washington Post with a conservative editorial line. According to Politico, "When it came to the editorial page, Anschutz's instructions were explicit – he 'wanted nothing but conservative columns and conservative op-ed writers,' said one former employee."^[3] The Examiner's writers have included Michael Barone, Tim Cavanaugh, David Freddoso, Tara Palmeri, Bill Sammon, Rudy Takala, and Byron York.

The Examiner endorsed John McCain in the 2008 presidential election^[15] and Adrian Fenty in the Democratic primary for mayor in 2010.^[16] On December 14, 2011, the newspaper endorsed Mitt Romney for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, publishing an editorial saying he was the only Republican who could beat Barack Obama in the general election.^[17]

In January 2019, the Washington Examiner distributed a story with the feature, "Line farmer: 'We've discovered petition mats around here.

It's stunning'."

Shortly from there on, President Donald Trump refered to the story as another avocation for a boundary divider in the midst of the 2018-2019 central government closure.

The story being referred to refered to one unknown farmer who offered no proof of these Muslim petition floor coverings, for example, photographs.

The story gave no elaboration on how the farmer knew the carpets being referred to were Muslim supplication mats.

The creator of the story earlier filled in as press secretary for the counter migration bunch Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Accounts of Muslim petition mats at the boundary are metropolitan fantasies that have as often as possible sprung up since at any rate 2005, yet with no proof to prove the claims.[18][19][20][21][22][23] The Examiner never gave an explanation or withdrew the story.

In April 2019, Quartz detailed that White House counsel Stephen Miller had been intentionally spilling data on line misgivings and refuge searchers to the Washington Examiner so the paper would distribute stories with disturbing measurements that occasionally censured DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, which he could then show to Trump and subvert her position.

Nielsen was terminated in April 2019 for supposedly not being adequately hawkish on immigration.^[24][25]

On June 20, 2019, the paper falsely reported that The New York Times had "fed information" to the FBI about Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law. The paper issued a major correction within a day. Prior to the correction, Trump tweeted, "Just revealed that the Failing and Desperate New York Times was feeding false stories about me, & those associated with me, to the FBI," which was retweeted over 20,000 times.^[26][27]

After the Climategate discussion, the Washington Examiner distributed a commentary which said of environment science, "A few decades henceforth, I suspect, individuals will think back and can't help thinking about why so numerous administration, corporate and media elites were taken in by publicity that depended on such terrible and deceptive evidence."[28]

In 2017, the Washington Examiner article board censured upheld President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, which the Examiner publication board depicted as "a major ostentatious arrangement of void guarantees...

The Earth's environment is changing, as it generally has.

Also, part of the explanation it is changing is because of human action.

However, those two realities are pardons neither for alarmism and reflexive, yet ineffectual activity, nor for forfeiting power to give lawmakers a momentary buzz of phony goodness and green guerrillas another weapon with which to snare popularity based policymaking."[29][30]

In August 2019, The Washington Examiner distributed an article, named "The incredible disappointment of the environment models", which guaranteed that environment models were not substantial logical apparatuses.

Researchers depicted the Washington Examiner commentary as exceptionally deceptive, noticing that there were various bogus affirmations and carefully chose information in the op-ed.^[31]