The spread of fake news increased dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide. Studies among political and medical information groups such as the National Library of Medicine and even Harvard have proven this again and again.
Kayla Gogarty (Media Matters): People often engage more with sensational content than they do some sort of, like driver reporting. Unfortunately, in the case of Epoch Times, you have someone who has, you know, founded it and runs it with ties to right wing, you know, right-wing politicians and figures. So, you can kind of get a sense of that agenda by understanding those ties and understanding some of those motivations.
We think of this as old news -- something we at least have an understanding of, but in fact we don't. It's a constantly evolving story that has actually become more insidious and harder to track.
The Epoch Times controlled by the leader of the Falun Gong is an excellent example of the still growing blight on truth and fairness.
Dr. Nolan Higdon (Author & Lecturer, California State University): Those who create fake news in a democracy often do it to try and persuade or sway or guide voters' behavior. So if you have false information coming out from Epoch Times or Steve Bannon, obviously they're going to design that information to try and shift the citizens to support a more conservative or right-wing agenda.
Kayla Gogarty: Outlets like the Epoch Times in particular, they use innocuous videos that often will be, you know, animals and other things that, you know, get high engagement tens of millions of views, and then those videos will be alongside on their page alongside misinformation, uh, you know, harmful rhetoric about the 2020 Election, and things of that nature.
Dr. Nolan Higdon: And one of the ways they found to succeed in doing that, is to give news that demographic that confirms their world view and create an evil character of their opponent.
Is any person or organization who they claim to be well over the last few years, this alleged news outlet in particular has come to the forefront as a media organization whose agenda is anything but facts. The Epoch Times claims to be about "Truth and Tradition" when in fact they've proven that a wealthy person with an agenda can easily push the political and social needle in a nation to suit their agenda. The Epoch Times has had and continues to have serious detrimental effect on the divide that continues to grow in America.
Dr. Nolan Higdon: Every person has preferences and ideologies, biases that shape their thinking. And if you have the money to buy a news outlet, those biases will be in your news outlet.
Dragon Springs is an over 400-acre compound in New York state in America. This is home to Li Hongzhi oversees the Falun Gong on this compound, a cult founded in the early 1990s. It's important to note that Li Hongzhi has spoken against modern medical treatments, race mixing and homosexuality.
This private secluded group that homeschools its young people and is less than appreciated by their neighbors has begun to take a stranglehold on media influence in North America and in these actions to choke out "Truth and Balance" in favor of right-winged influence and power.
Kayla Gogarty: Unfortunately, it's science and is one of many things that has been politicized particularly during Covid-19. Because there are other people with other agendas, you know, political agendas for instance. We saw the ability of anti-vaccine (mis)information, anti-mask misinformation really spread quickly on Facebook and other platforms, and really lead to real world harm. We've seen similar activity around LGBTQ issues lately.
Millions of dollars are spent on swaying public thoughts and opinions for only one reason: divide personal and divide agendas. Getting to the root of this, is an important first step to getting back to real news, facts and society working towards common goals from a position of Truth and Knowledge.
Dr. Nolan Higdon: It will take a long time to make the United States more critically media literate. But it's also taken a long time to get here we've sort of let American democracy and the news media system really die on the vine and education with it.
Kayla Gogarty: One of the biggest threats to our way of life is the ability of social media to so quickly spread this misinformation across the United States across the world. And platforms are really not Rose to the Occasion they often will put profit over the safety of their users, and they'll allow misinformation to spread, they'll allow hateful rhetoric, and even if they have policies against this sort of rhetoric and misinformation. We often find that they are unable to consistently enforce their policies which allows, you know, misinformation and sensational content to still proliferate.
Intentional misinformation is corruption, and this corruption is not only powerful, it's dangerous. The Epoch Times in Li have been focused on utilizing the best meaning the worst perpetrator when it comes to spreading fake news: Facebook.
Mainstream media in the US and Canada have repeatedly called out the Epoch Times for misinformation and this includes mainstream conservative media. It's never a good sign when a media organization makes headlines rather than simply reports them.
Dr. Nolan Higdon: Epoch Times is a very interesting outlet. There's a lot of questions about its funding model. Those of us in the media literacy world think that you should always look to see the ways in which funding influences the type of reporting. We have some details about the Epoch Times, obviously we know those were opposed to the Chinese Communist Party, they've had a hand in designing it, we know that they've increasingly gravitated toward conservative narratives, also been caught perpetuating false information that runs in conservative circles things like Qanon and other things like that. So that's what we know about the Epoch Times in general, but where this funding has come from, what their purpose is, we know very little detail tells about that.
Kayla Gogarty: There's definitely a problem with partisan, you know, outlets trying to pose as reputable news sources in addition to Epoch Times we've seen this across the country with these local news outlets that are actually just partisan outlets often funded by, you know, right-wing figures and reckoning leaders, and it allows it gives a sense of credibility to these outlets that really they don't deserve, and it helps spread that misinformation around.
Many believe that Covid or climate change are the biggest problems facing mankind, in fact disinformation may prove to be far more dangerous. At the time of this filming, we reached out to the Epoch Times to give them a chance to answer these allegations, they declined.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JboMzy58L0M
