The billboard is remarkably simple. Next to a photo of an unidentified man, on a canary yellow background, the tagline reads “#1 Trusted News.” Below, a url encourages people to visit the website for the Epoch Times.
Despite its claims, the Epoch Times is not the most-trusted news outlet by any official measure. The outlet has a mysterious ownership structure, has elevated conspiracy theories and employed suspicious marketing strategies that saw them banned from advertising on Facebook.
The outlet's sophisticated appearance, both in print and online, obscures the partisan slant of its shadowy operation.
“I think that just makes it much harder for most people — not just journalists or academics — to distinguish fact from fiction. Or if not fiction, at least exaggeration,” said Priyanjana Bengani, a researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Bengani researches partisan news outlets with a focus on digital media.
This is not the first time the Epoch Times has made Colorado news. In 2019, unsolicited copies of the print edition of the Epoch Times appeared in Routt County mailboxes. Local radio personality Shannon Lukens was one of the recipients.
“I don’t want to be associated with any journalism outlet that has a bias or agenda,” Lukens told the Steamboat Pilot & Today.
That same year, journalists spotted copies of the newspaper inside the Colorado State Capitol. The papers were placed on racks reserved for the Denver Post, and the Epoch Times publisher said they did so with permission from both the Denver Post and Capitol building administrators. Denver Post and Capitol officials said that was not true.
John Tang started the Epoch Times in Georgia in 2000 and he is a member of Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual movement that Li Hongzhi founded in 1992. Li has decried homosexuality as “filthy” and “deviant.” He rejects modern medicine and art, and has said that aliens from other planets “corrupted mankind” by introducing modern technology.
Li’s views are reflected in the Epoch Times’ articles and videos. The outlet has published reports with headlines such as “The Sinister Theory Behind the Q in LGBTQ” and "How Our Thoughts and Feelings Can Change the Course of Cancer."
According to the New York Times, the Epoch Times “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.”
A former Epoch Times employee, Steve Klett, told NBC News that his articles were edited to remove any outside criticisms of Donald Trump. Other topics were off limits.
“The worst was the Pulse shooting,” Klett said, referring to the 2016 shooting in which a gunman killed 49 people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando.
“We weren’t allowed to cover stories involving homosexuality, but that bumps up against them wanting to cover Islamic terrorism. So I wrote four articles without using the word 'gay,'” he said.
Over the past 24 years, the Epoch Times has grown dramatically, yet very little is known about the outlet’s ownership. The New York Times reports that the Epoch Times “is decentralized and operates as a cluster of regional chapters, each organized as a separate nonprofit. It is also extraordinarily secretive.”
“When you mask [the ownership], and you give the illusion of nonpartisanship or non-biased or trusted — pick the moniker of your choice — it effectively ends up deceiving the reader … as to what your true intentions are,” Bengani said.
Ad Fontes, which produces another popular media chart, ranked the Epoch Times as “strong right,” calling the outlet both “unreliable” and “problematic.” (Ad Fontes ranked PBS as “middle.”)
The Epoch Times also points out that it has never “endorsed a political candidate.” This needs more context. While it has not made an official endorsement like the ones you might read in the New York Times editorial section, the Epoch Times spent millions of dollars in advertisements backing Donald Trump. In 2019, NBC News reported that the Epoch Times spent $1.5 million on 11,000 Facebook ads over the course of six months.
“All of the ads are very pro-Trump, but they also push a conspiratorial message,” said reporter Brandy Zadrozny, who covers misinformation and extremism.
The advertising dramatically increased the Epoch Times’ readership and revenue, but it came at a cost. Facebook found that the Epoch Times “leveraged foreign actors posing as Americans to push political content” and banned the outlet from future advertising.
Unofficial Facebook accounts with generic names continued pushing ads with Epoch Times content.
“I remember they were running ads under the banner of ‘Pure American Journalism’ or ‘Honest Paper,’” Bengani said. “How do you expect a regular user of any social media platform to discern that they’re actually all the same entity? Is it asking too much of them to actually make that distinction? I think it is.”
Facebook later removed many of the ads from the unofficial accounts for violating the platform’s advertising standards. Representatives from the Epoch Times said they advertised under the new accounts because Facebook intitially did not explain why they blocked the main Epoch Times profile from posting ads.
The outlet has strong ties with another organization that is ubiquitous on billboards: Shen Yun.
Falun Gong practitioners in 2006 founded the anti-communist dance troupe, which practices at a compound in upstate New York called Dragon Springs. The compound is the headquarters for Falun Gong and Li Hongzhi reportedly lives there among his followers.
NBC News reports that although Epoch Times representatives deny any official affiliation with Falun Gong, there are “clear financial and organizational ties.”
“The Epoch Times board members and most staff are Falun Gong practitioners. The nonprofits behind The Epoch Times and Friends of Falun Gong, the movement’s advocacy organization, share executives and provide grants and services to each other, according to tax filings,” Zadrozny wrote.
Source Link: https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/news/epoch-times-billboards-denver/
