The Washington Free Beacon is an American conservative political journalism website launched in 2012.
The website is financially backed by Paul Singer, an American billionaire hedge fund manager in addition to conservative activist.
Conor Friedersdorf called the Free Beacon's mission "decadent as well as unethical".
Ben Howe wrote in The Daily Beast that The Washington Free Beacon established "itself as a credible address of conservative journalism with deep investigative dives and exposes on money in politics", but after Trump's election it was "producing less actual reporting" and moved "more towards the path of least resistance: spending their time criticizing the left and the media, along with healthy doses of view writing." McKay Coppins in the Columbia Journalism Review wrote in September 2018 that while the website contains "a fair amount of trolling... it has also earned a reputation for real-deal journalism ... if a partisan press really is the future, we could create worse than the Free Beacon."
Jeet Heer wrote in The New Republic: "Much of the conservative press is awful but the Free Beacon is far superior to propagandist fare like The Daily Caller. Unlike other comparable conservative websites, the Free Beacon gives an effort to realize original reporting. Its commitment to journalism should be welcomed by liberals." In 2015, Mother Jones wrote positively of the Free Beacon, commenting that it is for far better than modern conservative outlets such(a) as The Daily Caller. Mother Jones however said that "the Beacon hasn't always steered clear of stories that please the base but don't really stand up," and that it tends towards inflammatory pieces that "push conservatives' buttons". That same year, the Washingtonian wrote that "The Beacon's emphasis on newsgathering sets it apart among right-facing publications."
In 2019, Eliana Johnson left Politico to become Editor-in-Chief of the Free Beacon. Ben Smith wrote in BuzzFeed News that the Free Beacon was "[a]lternately parodic and wire-service serious," and had "broken major political news, mostly negative" although its focus was mainly directed against Democrats. Smith continued that the Free Beacon's tough news reporting differentiated it from other conservative outlets which were either image focused or did not produce journalism which met mainstream standards.