The Epoch Times was founded by Chinese-American adherents to a spiritual movement and meditation practice known as Falun Gong. That news outlet has in recent years, as reported by
BuzzFeed News and
NBC News, transformed into a misinformation-laden, pro-Trump mouthpiece. After Facebook banned The Epoch Times from buying ads on that social media network in the summer of 2019, several “sock-puppet
pages” popped up promoting Epoch Times content without disclosure. Facebook banned these pages from ad buys as well in August, following NBC News’ follow-up
reporting.
Here, Snopes reports on a pro-Trump media network whose reach is rapidly expanding on Facebook and is linked in multiple ways to The Epoch Times. This outlet, which goes by the name The BL (The
Beauty of Life) and first appeared around 2016, is a large international operation. It has a prodigious social media presence on Facebook that can be linked to at least 82 Facebook groups and pages representing a total of over 28 million followers. The site has spent at least $510,698 on Facebook ad buys with pro-Trump content and other promotions. Its staff members also appear to be cultivating several Trump-specific Facebook pages and groups and covertly administering them under the umbrella of The BL, in most cases without disclosure.
Despite the fact that the CEO of the company that owns The BL was once the CEO of Epoch Times Vietnam, and despite the fact that The BL’s editor-in-chief is a former editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times English language edition, an unnamed representative of The BL told us by email that “The BL has NO connection with The Epoch Times.” Similarly, The Epoch Times’ publisher, Stephan Gregory, told us by email that “The Epoch Times is not affiliated with the BL.” Such statements, we believe, are not reflective of reality.
