Opinion Dont Get Fooled Again Daily Caller
How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine
Since 2016, the Falun Gong-backed newspaper has used aggressive Facebook tactics and correct-wing misinformation to create an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire.
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For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. Just in 2016 and 2017, the paper made ii changes that transformed it into one of the country's nigh powerful digital publishers.
The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation.
First, it embraced President Trump, treating him as an ally in Falun Gong's scorched-world fight against China's ruling Communist Political party, which banned the group two decades ago and has persecuted its members always since. Its relatively staid coverage of U.S. politics became more partisan, with more articles explicitly supporting Mr. Trump and criticizing his opponents.
Effectually the aforementioned time, The Epoch Times bet big on another powerful American institution: Facebook. The publication and its affiliates employed a novel strategy that involved creating dozens of Facebook pages, filling them with feel-good videos and viral clickbait, and using them to sell subscriptions and drive traffic dorsum to its partisan news coverage.
In an April 2017 electronic mail to the staff obtained by The New York Times, the paper's leadership envisioned that the Facebook strategy could assist plow The Epoch Times into "the world's largest and most authoritative media." It could likewise introduce millions of people to the teachings of Falun Gong, fulfilling the group'due south mission of "saving sentient beings."
Today, The Epoch Times and its affiliates are a strength in right-wing media, with tens of millions of social media followers spread beyond dozens of pages and an online audition that rivals those of The Daily Caller and Breitbart News, and with a like willingness to feed the online fever swamps of the far right.
It too has growing influence in Mr. Trump's inner circumvolve. The president and his family unit have shared articles from the paper on social media, and Trump administration officials accept sat for interviews with its reporters. In August, a reporter from The Epoch Times asked a question at a White House press briefing.
It is a remarkable success story for Falun Gong, which has long struggled to establish its bona fides confronting Beijing's efforts to demonize it as an "evil cult," partly because its strident accounts of persecution in China can sometimes exist difficult to substantiate or veer into exaggeration. In 2006, an Epoch Times reporter disrupted a White Firm visit by the Chinese president past shouting, "Evil people volition dice early."
Stephen G. Bannon, Mr. Trump's quondam chief strategist and a old chairman of Breitbart, said in an interview in July that The Epoch Times'due south fast growth had impressed him.
"They'll be the summit conservative news site in two years," said Mr. Bannon, who was arrested on fraud charges in August. "They punch way above their weight, they have the readers, and they're going to be a force to be reckoned with."
Prototype
But the arrangement and its affiliates accept grown, in part, by relying on sketchy social media tactics, pushing dangerous conspiracy theories and downplaying their connection to Falun Gong, an investigation by The Times has found. The investigation included interviews with more than a dozen onetime Epoch Times employees, too as internal documents and revenue enhancement filings. Many of these people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, or however had family unit in Falun Gong.
Embracing Mr. Trump and Facebook has fabricated The Epoch Times a partisan powerhouse. But it has likewise created a global-scale misinformation automobile that has repeatedly pushed fringe narratives into the mainstream.
The publication has been one of the most prominent promoters of "Spygate," a baseless conspiracy theory involving claims that Obama assistants officials illegally spied on Mr. Trump'south 2016 campaign. Publications and shows linked to The Epoch Times have promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and spread distorted claims about voter fraud and the Black Lives Affair motility. More recently, they take promoted the unfounded theory that the coronavirus — which the publication calls the "CCP Virus," in an attempt to link it to the Chinese Communist Party — was created as a bioweapon in a Chinese military lab.
The Epoch Times says it is independent and nonpartisan, and it rejects the suggestion that it is officially affiliated with Falun Gong.
Like Falun Gong itself, the newspaper — which publishes in dozens of countries — is decentralized and operates as a cluster of regional chapters, each organized as a split up nonprofit. It is also extraordinarily secretive. Editors at The Epoch Times turned down multiple requests for interviews, and a reporter'due south unannounced visit to the outlet's Manhattan headquarters this year was met with a threat from a lawyer.
Representatives for Li Hongzhi, the leader of Falun Gong, did non respond to requests for annotate. Neither did other residents of Dragon Springs, the compound in upstate New York that serves every bit Falun Gong's spiritual headquarters.
Many employees and Falun Gong practitioners contacted by The Times said they were instructed not to divulge details of the outlet's inner workings. They said they had been told that speaking negatively almost The Epoch Times would be tantamount to disobeying Mr. Li, who is known past his disciples as "Principal."
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The Epoch Times provided only partial answers to a long list of questions sent to its media function, and declined to reply questions about its finances and editorial strategy. In an email, which was not signed, the outlet defendant The Times of "defaming and diminishing a competitor" and displaying "a subtle grade of religious intimidation if not discrimination" by linking the publication to Falun Gong.
"The Epoch Times will non exist intimidated and volition not be silenced," the outlet added, "and based on the number of falsehoods and inaccuracies included in the New York Times questions we will consider all legal options in response."
Clarifying the Truth
Falun Gong, which Mr. Li introduced in Prc in 1992, revolves effectually a series of five meditation exercises and a process of moral cocky-comeback that is meant to lead to spiritual enlightenment. Today, the grouping is known for the demonstrations information technology holds around the world to "clarify the truth" most the Chinese Communist Party, which information technology accuses of torturing Falun Gong practitioners and harvesting the organs of those executed. (Tens of thousands beyond People's republic of china were sent to labor camps in the early on years of the crackdown, and the group's presence there is now much diminished.)
More recently, Falun Gong has come under scrutiny for what some former practitioners have characterized equally an extreme belief system that forbids interracial marriage, condemns homosexuality and discourages the apply of modern medicine, all allegations the grouping denies.
When The Epoch Times got its start in 2000, the goal was to counter Chinese propaganda and cover Falun Gong's persecution by the Chinese government. It began every bit a Chinese-language newspaper run out of the Georgia basement of John Tang, a graduate pupil and Falun Gong practitioner.
By 2004, The Epoch Times had expanded into English. One of the newspaper'south early on hires was Genevieve Belmaker, and then a 27-year-old Falun Gong practitioner with piddling journalism feel. Ms. Belmaker, now 43, described the early on Epoch Times every bit a cross between a scrappy media outset-upward and a zealous church message, with a staff composed mostly of unpaid volunteers drawn from the local Falun Gong capacity.
"The mission-driven part of it was, let'due south have a media outlet that not only tells the truth about Falun Gong but about everything," Ms. Belmaker said.
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Mr. Li, Falun Gong'due south founder, likewise saw information technology that way. In speeches, he referred to The Epoch Times and other Falun Gong-linked outlets — including the New Tang Dynasty TV station, or NTD — as "our media," and said they could help publicize Falun Gong's story and values around the world.
Two former employees recalled that the paper's top editors had traveled to Dragon Springs to run into with Mr. Li. One employee who attended a coming together said Mr. Li had weighed in on editorial and strategic decisions, acting as a kind of shadow publisher. The Epoch Times denied these accounts, saying in a statement, "There has been no such coming together."
The line betwixt The Epoch Times and Falun Gong is blurry at times. Two former Epoch Times reporters said they had been asked to write flattering profiles of strange performers existence recruited into Shen Yun, the heavily advertised dance performance series that Falun Gong backs, considering it would strengthen those performers' visa applications. Another former Epoch Times reporter recalled being assigned to write critical manufactures about politicians including John Liu, a Taiwanese-American former New York Metropolis councilman whom the group viewed as soft on Cathay and hostile to Falun Gong.
These articles helped Falun Gong accelerate its goals, but they lured few subscribers.
Matthew Thousand. Tullar, a erstwhile sales manager for The Epoch Times'southward Orange County edition in New York, wrote on his LinkedIn page that his squad initially "printed 800 papers each week, had no subscribers, and utilized a 'throw it in their driveway for free' marketing strategy." Mr. Tullar did non respond to requests for annotate.
Ms. Belmaker, who left the newspaper in 2017, described information technology as a bare-basic operation that was always searching for new moneymaking ventures.
"Information technology was very curt-term thinking," she said. "Nosotros weren't looking more than three weeks downwardly the road."
A Trump Pin
By 2014, The Epoch Times was edging closer to Mr. Li'southward vision of a respectable news outlet. Subscriptions were growing, the paper'due south reporting was winning journalism awards, and its finances were stabilizing.
"There was all this optimism that things were going to level up," Ms. Belmaker said.
Only at a staff meeting in 2015, leadership announced that the publication was in trouble again, Ms. Belmaker recalled. Facebook had changed its algorithm for determining which manufactures appeared in users' newsfeeds, and The Epoch Times'south traffic and ad acquirement were suffering.
In response, the publication assigned reporters to churn out as many as five posts a day in a search for viral hits, often lowbrow fare with titles similar "Grizzly Bear Does Belly Bomb Into a Pond Puddle."
"Information technology was a competition for traffic," Ms. Belmaker said.
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As the 2016 election neared, reporters noticed that the paper's political coverage took on a more than partisan tone.
Steve Klett, who covered the 2016 entrada for the paper, said his editors had encouraged favorable coverage about Mr. Trump after he won the Republican nomination.
"They seemed to have this almost messianic fashion of viewing Trump every bit the anti-Communist leader who would bring about the end of the Chinese Communist Party," Mr. Klett said.
Subsequently Mr. Trump'south victory, The Epoch Times hired Brendan Steinhauser, a well-connected Tea Party strategist, to help make inroads with conservatives. Mr. Steinhauser said the organization's goal, beyond raising its contour in Washington, had been to make Falun Gong's persecution a Trump administration priority.
"They wanted more people in Washington to exist aware of how the Chinese Communist Political party operates, and what it has done to spiritual and ethnic minorities," Mr. Steinhauser said.
All In on Facebook
Backside the scenes, The Epoch Times was as well developing a secret weapon: a Facebook growth strategy that would ultimately aid take its message to millions.
Co-ordinate to emails reviewed past The Times, the Facebook program was adult by Trung Vu, the former head of The Epoch Times'due south Vietnamese edition, known equally Dai Ky Nguyen, or DKN.
In Vietnam, Mr. Trung's strategy involved filling a network of Facebook pages with viral videos and pro-Trump propaganda, some of it lifted word for word from other sites, and using automatic software, or bots, to generate fake likes and shares, a former DKN employee said. Employees used fake accounts to run the pages, a practice that violated Facebook'southward rules but that Mr. Trung said was necessary to protect employees from Chinese surveillance, the one-time employee said.
Mr. Trung did non reply to requests for comment.
According to the 2017 email sent to Epoch Times workers in America, the Vietnamese experiment was a "remarkable success" that fabricated DKN one of the largest publishers in Vietnam.
The outlet, the email claimed, was "having a profound impact on saving sentient beings in that country."
The Vietnamese team was asked to help Epoch Media Group — the umbrella arrangement for Falun Gong's biggest U.Southward. media properties — prepare its ain Facebook empire, co-ordinate to that email. That year, dozens of new Facebook pages appeared, all linked to The Epoch Times and its affiliates. Some were explicitly partisan, others positioned themselves every bit sources of real and unbiased news, and a few, like a sense of humor page called "Funniest Family Moments," were asunder from news entirely.
Perhaps the most audacious experiment was a new right-wing politics site called America Daily.
Today, the site, which has more than than a one thousand thousand Facebook followers, peddles far-right misinformation. It has posted anti-vaccine screeds, an article falsely claiming that Bill Gates and other elites are "directing" the Covid-19 pandemic and allegations about a "Jewish mob" that controls the world.
Emails obtained by The Times show that John Nania, a longtime Epoch Times editor, was involved in starting America Daily, along with executives from Sound of Hope, a Falun Gong-affiliated radio network. Records on Facebook testify that the page is operated past the Sound of Promise Network, and a pinned mail on its Facebook page contains a promotional video for Falun Gong.
In a statement, The Epoch Times said it had "no business concern human relationship" with America Daily.
Many of the Facebook pages operated by The Epoch Times and its affiliates followed a like trajectory. They began by posting viral videos and uplifting news manufactures aggregated from other sites. They grew speedily, sometimes adding hundreds of thousands of followers a week. And then, they were used to steer people to buy Epoch Times subscriptions and promote more partisan content.
Several of the pages gained significant followings "seemingly overnight," said Renee DiResta, a disinformation researcher with the Stanford Internet Observatory. Many posts were shared thousands of times merely received virtually no comments — a ratio, Ms. DiResta said, that is typical of pages that have been additional by "click farms," firms that generate imitation traffic by paying people to click on sure links over and over again.
The Epoch Times denies using click farms or other illicit tactics to aggrandize its pages. "The Epoch Times'due south social media strategies were different from DKN, and used Facebook's own promotional tools to gain an increased organic following," the outlet said, adding that The Epoch Times cutting ties with Mr. Trung in 2018.
But concluding year, The Epoch Times was barred from advert on Facebook — where information technology had spent more than $i.5 million over 7 months — after the social network announced that the outlet's pages had evaded its transparency requirements by disguising its ad purchases.
This year, Facebook took down more than 500 pages and accounts linked to Truth Media, a network of anti-China pages that had been using fake accounts to amplify their messages. The Epoch Times denied whatever involvement, but Facebook'due south investigators said Truth Media "showed some links to on-platform activity by Epoch Media Group and NTD."
"We've taken enforcement actions confronting Epoch Media and related groups several times," said a Facebook spokeswoman, who added that the social network would punish the outlet if it violated more than rules in the futurity.
Since being barred from advertisement on Facebook, The Epoch Times has moved much of its functioning to YouTube, where it has spent more than $1.8 million on ads since May 2018, according to Google'southward public database of political advertising.
Where the paper's money comes from is something of a mystery. Sometime employees said they had been told that The Epoch Times was financed by a combination of subscriptions, ads and donations from wealthy Falun Gong practitioners. In 2018, the most recent year for which the arrangement's revenue enhancement returns are publicly available, The Epoch Times Association received several sizable donations, but none big enough to pay for a multimillion-dollar ad blitz.
Mr. Bannon is among those who have noticed The Epoch Times'southward deep pockets. Last yr, he produced a documentary about China with NTD. When he talked with the outlet almost other projects, he said, money never seemed to be an event.
"I'd requite them a number," Mr. Bannon said. "And they'd come up dorsum and say, 'We're skilful for that number.'"
'The Moral Objective Is Gone'
The Epoch Times's pro-Trump turn has upset some sometime employees, like Ms. Belmaker.
Ms. Belmaker, now a freelance writer and editor, still believes in many of Falun Gong'south teachings, she said. Only she has grown disenchanted with The Epoch Times, which she sees as running reverse to Falun Gong's core principles of truth, pity and tolerance.
"The moral objective is gone," she said. "They're on the wrong side of history, and I don't retrieve they care."
Recently, The Epoch Times has shifted its focus to the coronavirus. Information technology pounced on China'due south missteps in the early on days of the pandemic, and its reporters wrote about misreported virus statistics and Chinese influence in the Earth Health Organization.
Some of these articles were true. But others pushed exaggerated or false claims, like the unproven theory that the virus was engineered in a lab every bit part of a Chinese biological warfare strategy.
Some of the claims were repeated in a documentary that both NTD and The Epoch Times posted on YouTube, where it has been viewed more five million times. The documentary features the discredited virologist Judy Mikovits, who as well starred in the viral "Plandemic" video, which Facebook, YouTube and other social platforms pulled this year for spreading false claims.
The Epoch Times said, "In our documentary we offered a range of evidence and viewpoints without drawing any conclusions."
Ms. Belmaker, who still keeps a photo of Principal Li on a shelf in her house, said she recoiled whenever an advertisement for The Epoch Times popped up on YouTube promoting some new partisan talking point.
1 recent video, "Digging Below Narratives," is a ii-infinitesimal infomercial about China's mishandling of the coronavirus. The ad'due south host says The Epoch Times has an "underground network of sources" in China providing information about the government'southward response to the virus.
Information technology'south a plausible claim, but the video'due south host makes no mention of The Epoch Times'south ties to Falun Gong, or its 2-decade-long campaign against Chinese communism, saying merely that the paper is "giving you an accurate picture of what's happening in this world."
"We tell information technology like it is," he says.
Ben Smith contributed reporting. Jack Begg contributed enquiry.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/technology/epoch-times-influence-falun-gong.html
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