The Epoch Times
The Epoch Times is a far-right[1] international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement.[29] The newspaper, based in New York City, is part of the Epoch Media Group, which also operates New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television.[30] The Epoch Times has websites in 35 countries but is blocked in mainland China.[31]
Not to be confused with Unix time, which is called Epoch time.Type
International newspaper
Epoch Media Group
John Tang
Epoch Media Group
May 20, 2000
Multiple, mainly Chinese and English
229 W. 28th St.
New York, NY 10001
U.S.
大紀元時報
大纪元时报
Dàjìyuán Shíbào
Dàjìyuán Shíbào
The Epoch Times opposes the Chinese Communist Party,[32][33][22] platforms far-right politicians in Europe,[9][11][22] and has supported former President Donald Trump in the U.S.;[34][35] a 2019 report by NBC News showed it to be the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign itself.[30][36][22] The Epoch Times frequently runs stories promoting other Falun Gong-affiliated groups, such as the performing arts company Shen Yun.[34][24][37] The Epoch Media Group's news sites and YouTube channels have promoted conspiracy theories such as QAnon, anti-vaccine misinformation[41] and false claims of fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election.[44]
History and relation to Falun Gong
The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by John Tang and other Chinese Americans affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement.[22] Tang was a graduate student in Georgia at the time; he began the newspaper in his basement.[34] The founders said they were responding to censorship inside China and a lack of international understanding about the Chinese government's repression of Falun Gong.[45][46]
By 2003, The Epoch Times website and group of newspapers had grown into one of the largest Chinese-language news sites and newspaper groups outside China, with local editions in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and major Western European countries.[47] The first English edition launched online in September 2003, followed by the first print edition in 2004.[48] The English Australian edition was launched in Sydney in 2005.[30]
Nick Couldry and James Curran wrote in 2003 that the paper represents a "major step in the evolution of Falun Gong-related alternative media", and may be part of a de facto media alliance with democracy activists in exile.[49] In 2003 sociologist Yuezhi Zhao wrote that the paper "displays an indisputable ideological and organizational affinity with Falun Gong" and that it strongly emphasizes negative portrayals of the Chinese government and positive portrayals of Falun Gong. Per Zhao, Epoch portrays itself as neutral, independent, and public-interest oriented.[47]
In 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "three new U.S.-based, Chinese-language media outlets that provide provocative reporting about the Communist Party, government oppression and social unrest in China (namely The Epoch Times, Sound of Hope, and NTDTV) have ties to the Falun Gong spiritual movement." When interviewed, executives at each outlet claimed they did not represent the Falun Gong movement as a whole.[32]
Associated Press reporter Nahal Toosi wrote in 2006 that it is "technically inaccurate" to say that Falun Gong owns The Epoch Times, though many of the paper's staff are Falun Gong practitioners.[50] Toosi noted "many observers" have said Falun Gong uses the newspaper for its public relations campaigns, and the paper is connected with the group and carries sympathetic coverage of it.[55]
The English Epoch Times chair Stephen Gregory has denied that The Epoch Times is directly connected to Falun Gong.[50][56][57] Independent reporters in the U.S. have confirmed the connection.[30][34][56]
In 2008, David Ownby, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal and the author of Falun Gong and the Future of China, said Falun Gong practitioners set up the newspaper with their own money. He described The Epoch Times as wishing to be taken seriously as a global newspaper rather than being judged on the basis of its strong association with Falun Gong. He wrote: "Epoch Times is a newspaper with a mission, that of reporting on issues bearing on human rights throughout the world, which allows for considerable focus on China and Falun Gong."[46]
Canadian scholar Clement Tong wrote[51][58][59][60][61] The Epoch Times "operates as a mouthpiece for" Falun Gong without an official statement of affiliation with the movement.[59]
In 2009, Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, appeared at the newspaper's headquarters in Manhattan and called for the expansion of The Epoch Times to "become regular media".[30] Li has called The Epoch Times "our media", along with the NTD digital production company and the Shen Yun dance troupe.[30][62] Two former employees said that top editors traveled to meet with Li at Falun Gong's compound, Dragon Springs, where he weighed in on editorial and strategic decisions; The Epoch Times denied that a meeting took place.[34]
Former Epoch Times employees have noted Falun Gong practitioners' involvement in the management and editorial process.[30] Three anonymous former employees said Epoch Times workers were encouraged to attend weekly "Fa study" sessions outside work hours to study Li's teachings.[63] Former employees have said that criticizing The Epoch Times amounts to disobeying Li.[34]
The Epoch Times runs frequent promotional stories about the related Shen Yun dance troupe. The New Yorker's review of Shen Yun called The Epoch Times "the world's foremost purveyor of Shen Yun content."[24]
In a 2018 report, conservative think tank the Hoover Institution wrote, "the space for truly independent Chinese-language media in the United States has shrunk to a few media outlets supported by the adherents of Falun Gong, the banned religious sect in China, and a small publication and website called Vision Times", the report noting that the latter is also associated with Falun Gong.[64]
In a 2019 report, Reporters Without Borders wrote, "Aside from the Epoch Times newspaper and New Tang Dynasty Television, which are run by the Falun Gong, a religious movement persecuted in China, and China Digital Times, a website founded by a leading US-based critic of the regime, the United States now has few truly independent diaspora media."[65]
In 2019, an NBC News investigative report suggested The Epoch Times's political coverage may be affected by Falun Gong believers' anticipation of a judgment day in which communists are sent to hell and Falun Gong's allies are spared. Former Epoch Times employees told NBC News that Donald Trump is viewed as a key anti-communist ally,[30] allegedly hastening that judgment day.[66]
In 2020, Vox identified China Uncensored and NTD as affiliates of The Epoch Times, as part of a multilingual "media empire".[67]
Finances
According to NBC News, "little is publicly known about the precise ownership, origins or influences of The Epoch Times", and it is loosely organized into several regional tax-free nonprofits, under the umbrella of the Epoch Media Group, together with New Tang Dynasty Television.[30][34]
The newspaper's revenue has increased rapidly in recent years, from $3.8 million in 2016 to $8.1 million in 2017 (with spending of $7.2 million), $12.4 million in 2018[68] and $15.5 million in 2019.[69][70] Tax documents indicate that between 2012 and 2016, the group received $900,000 from a principal at Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund led at the time by the conservative political donor Robert Mercer.[71] Chris Kitze, a former NBC executive and creator of the fake news website Before It's News who also manages a cryptocurrency hedge fund, joined the paper's board as vice president in 2017.[68]
A 2020 New York Times report called The Epoch Times's recent wealth "something of a mystery". Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News who produced a documentary with NTD, said "I'd give them a number" on a project budget and "they'd come back and say, 'We're good for that number.'" Former employees say they were told The Epoch Times is financed by subscriptions, ads and donations from wealthy Falun Gong practitioners.[34]
The Epoch Times has increased its revenue by 685% over two years, reaching $122 million in 2021. Since 2019, it has gone mostly digital, spending millions on Facebook and YouTube advertisements (Facebook later banned the website, saying it "leveraged foreign actors posing as Americans to push political content"). As of 2023, The Epoch Times claims to be the US newspaper with the fourth-highest number of subscribers; this ranking cannot be verified as their circulation data is not audited by independent organizations.[72]
Notable coverage
"Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" editorials
In November 2004, the Chinese version of The Epoch Times published a series of editorials titled "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party". The editorials argued that China would not be free or prosperous until it was rid of the party, which it said was at odds with China's cultural and spiritual values.[80] The Epoch Times also organized a campaign called the Tuidang movement, urging people to quit the Chinese Communist Party, and said that more than 2 million people had resigned.[81] A report by the OpenNet Initiative said that 90% of websites mentioning the phrase "Nine Commentaries" were blocked in mainland China as of 2005.[82][83]
Caylan Ford, a former staff writer for The Epoch Times, wrote in a 2009 guest opinion article in The Christian Science Monitor that millions of copies of the "Nine Commentaries" articles were circulated in China by email, fax, and underground printing houses. Ford wrote that the campaign differed from the 1989 and 2008 democracy movements in China by drawing on Buddhist and Daoist spirituality.[80]
In 2012, a former People's Liberation Army Air Force officer testified to the United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China that he had been sentenced to four years of prison for distributing a "Nine Commentaries" DVD in Beijing.[84]
The Tuidang movement was called one of the top global events in 2011 by Russian economist Andrey Illarionov, who cited claims by The Epoch Times that over 100 million people had quit.[85]
Li Yi, a Hong Kong-based democratic activist, questioned The Epoch Times's claims about the number of resignations in an Apple Daily opinion piece in 2006, warned that the Tuidang movement could be using "lies to fight lies", and wrote that the propagandistic nature of the movement could hurt the integrity of the pro-democracy community.[86]
According to China scholar David Ownby, the Nine Commentaries are a "condemnation of communism and a direct indictment of the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party's rule in China." While acknowledging the "unnecessary violence" the Chinese Communist Party has inflicted, Ownby finds that the lack of balance and nuance in tone and style makes the editorials resemble "anti-Communist propaganda written in Taiwan in the 1950s".[46] Journalist Oscar Schwartz called the Nine Commentaries a "quasi-McCarthyist screed".[87]
Social media activity and bans
Ads banned by Facebook and YouTube
The Epoch Media Group spent $11 million on Facebook ads in 2019,[35] including, over a six-month period in 2019, more than $1.5 million on about 11,000 pro-Trump Facebook advertisements purchased by The Epoch Times.[30][116][35] According to publicly available Facebook ad data reported by NBC News, The Epoch Times spent more on pro-Trump ads than any group except the Trump campaign itself.[30][116]
Political ad spending on Facebook in April 2019 through an account called "Coverage of the Trump Presidency by The Epoch Times" exceeded any politician's spending except Trump's and Joe Biden's. Journalist Judd Legum wrote in May 2019 that The Epoch Times ads were "boosting Donald Trump and floating conspiracy theories about Joe Biden."[117]
In August 2019, Facebook banned The Epoch Times from advertising on its platform after finding that the paper broke its political transparency rules by publishing pro-Trump subscription ads through sockpuppet pages such as "Honest Paper" and "Pure American Journalism".[66][40] A Facebook representative told NBC: "Over the past year we removed accounts associated with The Epoch Times for violating our ad policies, including trying to get around our review systems."[66]
The Epoch Times publisher, Stephen Gregory, wrote in response that the paper did not intend to violate Facebook's rules and that its video ads were advertisements for subscriptions to the newspaper.[66]
After Facebook banned it from advertising, the newspaper shifted its spending to YouTube, where it has spent more than $1.8 million on ads, some promoting conspiracy theories, since May 2018.[63][34] YouTube demonetized Edge of Wonder, a program of the Epoch Media Group, on its platform, and removed Epoch Times ads relating to COVID-19.[118]
Removal of The BL (The Beauty of Life) from Facebook
In October 2019, the fact-checking website Snopes reported close links between The Epoch Times and a large network of Facebook pages and groups called The BL (The Beauty of Life) that shared pro-Trump views and conspiracy theories such as QAnon. At that time, The BL had spent at least $510,698 on Facebook advertising.[119] Hundreds of the ads were removed for violations of Facebook's advertising rules. By December 2019, the BL network of pages had 28 million Facebook followers, according to Snopes.[120]
The editor-in-chief of The BL had previously worked as editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times, and several other BL employees were listed as current or former Epoch Times employees.[119] The BL was registered in Middletown, New York, to an address that also was registered to Falun Gong's Sound of Hope radio network and was associated with the YouTube series Beyond Science, and Snopes found "the outlet as a whole is literally the English-language edition of Epoch Times Vietnam."[119][120]
Snopes found that The BL was using more than 300 fake Facebook profiles based in Vietnam and other countries, using names, stock photos and celebrity photos in their profiles to emulate Americans, to administer more than 150 pro-Trump Facebook groups amplifying its content.[120][121]
The Epoch Times and The BL denied being affiliated with each other, although the latter acknowledged that a "few of our staff" previously worked for The Epoch Times.[119]
In December 2019, Facebook announced it had removed a large network of accounts, pages, and groups linked to The BL and Epoch Media Group for coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign actor. The network had 55 million followers on Facebook and Instagram, and $9.5 million had been spent on Facebook ads through its accounts.[122]
The New York Times reported that The BL had used fake profile photos generated by artificial intelligence. The Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab director Graham Brookie said the coordinated network of fake accounts demonstrated "an eerie, tech-enabled future of disinformation." Facebook's head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said, "What's new here is that this is purportedly a U.S.-based media company leveraging foreign actors posing as Americans to push political content. We've seen it a lot with state actors in the past."[123][88]
Removal of TruthMedia from Facebook
On August 6, 2020, Facebook removed hundreds of fake accounts by a digital company called TruthMedia that promoted Epoch Times and NTD content and pro-Trump conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and protests in the United States.[124][125] The operation included 303 Facebook accounts, 181 pages, 44 Facebook groups and 31 Instagram accounts,[126] which in total were followed by more than 2 million people.[125] Snopes and NBC News reported that TruthMedia had ties to the Epoch Media Group,[127][125] but Stephen Gregory, publisher of The Epoch Times, denied this.[125]
TruthMedia, now banned from Facebook, continues to operate YouTube channels in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Vietnamese, and has accounts on Pinterest and Twitter.[124] It appears to have begun a petition to the White House to "start calling the novel coronavirus the CCP virus."[125][124]
SafeChat
In March 2021, Politico reported that SafeChat, a social media platform rife with disinformation and conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden that is popular with Trump supporters and Chinese dissidents, was closely linked to The Epoch Times and Falun Gong.[128]
Censorship by the Chinese government
In some cases The Epoch Times operates in a hostile overseas environment, in which "overseas Chinese media companies choosing to remain independent or publish non-approved content become the targets of an aggressive campaign of elimination or control."[129] In one instance, Chinese diplomatic officials made threats against media for reporting Falun Gong-related content; in other cases, advertisers and distributors have been threatened for supporting The Epoch Times.[130] Communist Party authorities have been accused of resorting to "militant methods" against the paper and its staff, including attacking staff and destroying computer equipment.[129]
In 2006, the International Federation of Journalists criticized what it called a "dirty war" against The Epoch Times, citing incidents such as The Epoch Times's Hong Kong printing plant being broken into and damaged by unidentified men, and Epoch's offices in Sydney and Toronto receiving suspicious mail envelopes suspected of containing toxic materials. The IFJ also noted incidences of Epoch Times staff and advertisers being intimidated, and newspapers being confiscated, in what it characterized as "a vicious witch-hunt aimed at crushing the voice of dissent."[131]
The newspaper was briefly banned from Malaysia after coming under reported pressure by the Chinese Communist Party.[53]
In 2016, the newspaper was removed from the pharmacy of Australian National University after the president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association confronted the pharmacist and threw out the papers. The incident drew national media coverage over questions of Chinese government-sponsored overseas student organizations.[132][133]
In November 2019, Reporters Without Borders called on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to protect press freedoms after The Epoch Times said four masked arsonists with batons had damaged its printing press.[134] Additionally, in a 2019 report, Reporters Without Borders said that The Epoch Times's chief technical officer, Li Yuan, was assaulted in his Atlanta, Georgia, home on February 8, 2006, by "suspected Chinese government agents" who took his two laptops.[65]
On April 12, 2021, the Hong Kong printing facility was vandalized during working hours, in the presence of staff members. The attack was captured by the surveillance camera, CCTV.[135][136]
The 2022 film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was blocked from release in China after the film was submitted for review and footage that made reference to The Epoch Times was found.[137]
White House controversies
In April 2006, a reporter with temporary Epoch Times press credentials unfurled a protest banner and heckled China's leader Hu Jintao at a summit with President George W. Bush, shouting, "Stop him from killing!" and "Evil people will die early", prompting Chinese officials to refuse to attend a ceremonial lunch in protest.[138][139] The Epoch Times later disassociated itself from the reporter.[140]
In September 2018, Epoch Times photographer Samira Bouaou broke White House protocol and handed Trump a folder.[141] In August 2020, the White House Correspondents' Association objected to the Trump administration's bending of COVID-19 social distancing rules in press briefings to favor The Epoch Times, The Gateway Pundit and One America News Network.[142][92]
Assessments
Ming Xia, a political science professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, wrote in 2007 that The Epoch Times represents part of Falun Gong's strategic effort to expand to non-practitioners, and "embed itself into the large civil society for influence and legitimacy."[50] In 2018 he described The Epoch Times staff as largely part-time and volunteer, and said they "do not follow the protocols professional journalists abide by."[141]
The misinformation tracker NewsGuard said that The Epoch Times "fails to gather and present information responsibly, rarely corrects or clarifies errors and remains opaque as to its ownership and funding".[22][31]
The Epoch Times has been criticized by some scholars for biases, particularly regarding the Chinese Communist Party and mainland China issues, as well as for being a "mouthpiece" of the Falun Gong movement.[143] James To, a New Zealand political scientist, described The Epoch Times as the "primary mouthpiece" of Falun Gong, writing that it "lacks credibility", despite the newspaper posing a "viable threat to the CCP" by publishing articles about the party's negative aspects.[144]
In his book Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China's Version of Twitter and Why, University of Toronto research fellow Jason Q. Ng referred to the paper's coverage of mainland China issues as "heavily biased against the Communist Party" and thus its reportage "should be viewed skeptically".[145]
A 2018 report by the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, called The Epoch Times one of the few independent Chinese-language media outlets in the U.S. not taken over by businessmen sympathetic to the Chinese government and one that remains "independent of PRC control."[64] The report also said that reports on China by The Epoch Times and other outlets affiliated with Falun Gong, which is banned from China, are "uneven".[64]
Seth Hettena wrote in The New Republic that The Epoch Times "has built a global propaganda machine, similar to Russia's Sputnik or RT, that pushes a mix of alternative facts and conspiracy theories that has won it far-right acolytes around the world."[11]
Joan Donovan of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University called The Epoch Times "a known disinformation operation".[93] Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor of communication at Syracuse University's S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said that The Epoch Times is "a notorious outlet that has been known to spread disinformation and misinformation."[19]
James Bettinger, a professor of communications at Stanford University and the director of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships, said "Even if Epoch Times is not associated with Falun Gong, if they consistently write about Falun Gong in the same perspective, or if there are no articles examining Falun Gong, people would perceive it as being not credible."[78] Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley, said in 2005 that "It's hard to vouch for their quality because it's difficult to corroborate, but it's not something to be dismissed as pure propaganda."[146]
In his 2008 book on Falun Gong, David Ownby wrote that The Epoch Times articles are "well written and interesting, if occasionally idiosyncratic in their coverage."[46][147][148] According to Ownby, the newspaper has been praised and also criticized for a perceived bias against the CCP, and support of Falun Gong practitioners and other dissidents such as Tibetans, Taiwanese independence advocates, democracy activists, Uyghurs and others. The paper is therefore often assessed in light of its connection to Falun Gong, rather than a thorough analysis of its editorial content.[46]
Jiao Guobiao, a former Beijing University journalism professor who was dismissed after criticizing the Propaganda Department, proposed that even if The Epoch Times published only negative information highly critical of the CCP, its attacks could never begin to counterbalance the propaganda the party publishes about itself. In addressing media balance, Jiao noted that the Chinese public lacked negative, critical information about their country. As such, he noted for a need of media balance based on the principles of freedom, equality, and legality, and that media balance "is the result of the collective imbalances of all."[58]
Haifeng Huang, professor of political science at the University of California, said, "I'm not exactly clear why they have become such a major pro-Trump voice" but "part of it is perhaps because they regard President Trump as tough on the Chinese government and therefore a natural ally for them."[63]
The web-only, German edition of the paper, Epoch Times Deutschland, has aligned with the anti-immigration far-right in Germany; the paper favorably comments on Alternative for Germany and Pegida while criticizing mainstream German media as not to be trusted.[9] Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian of Foreign Policy writes that "It's not clear why the German website of a Falun Gong newspaper would choose to promote right-wing populism in Germany" but that the decision could be a business decision to drive an increase in views of the publication, or because such views reflect the teaching of Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi, "who believes that mixed-race children are 'pitiable' and 'physically and intellectually incomplete'."[9]
A German media report described the outlet as a "favorite" of Pegida supporters, along with Sputnik News and Kopp Report, and found that its articles critical of immigration have been shared almost daily.[76]
A report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank, said the German edition of The Epoch Times "primarily runs anti-West, anti-American and pro-Kremlin content—a high proportion of this content is based on unverified information."[11][149]
In December 2019, the English Wikipedia deprecated the English and Chinese online versions of The Epoch Times as an "unreliable source" to use as a reference in Wikipedia, with editors calling it "an advocacy group for the Falun Gong, and... a biased or opinionated source that frequently publishes conspiracy theories."[150]
In March 2022, Angelo Carusone, the head of the watchdog group Media Matters for America, said that The Epoch Times "go[es] where the center for the strongest infrastructure or possibility of getting as much audience and influence and reach is", and added that this complexity makes it "radically different and hard to understand". According to Carusone, the metric of success for The Epoch Times is simply influence rather than money or a specific political agenda.[22]
Litigation
The Epoch Times and its co-founder Dana Cheng sued Maine Beacon reporter Dan Neumann for defamation after Neumann reported on Cheng's promotion of conspiracy theories about the January 6 Capitol attack in June 2021. In October 2022, the paper lost an effort to revive the lawsuit, with the judges finding that the alleged defamatory reporting was substantially true.[151]
Awards
In 2014, the newspaper's reporting won several journalism awards, which The New York Times later described as indicative of The Epoch Times "edging closer to Mr. Li's vision of a respectable news outlet", before it changed course in 2015 and 2016 to focus on viral content and a "Trump pivot".[34]
