- Oct 17, 2011
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In the runup to the 2020 election, a small news organization saw an opportunity.
The Epoch Times directed millions of dollars in advertising toward supporting President Donald Trump’s campaign and published dozens of articles parroting his lies about the election — resulting in huge growth to its audience and its coffers.
With the new [political] bedfellows came a new revenue stream. Though Falun Gong practitioners had been a reliable source of small donations in previous years, in 2020 the group started to receive gifts and grants from big money conservative donors.
The strategy garnered criticism from fact-checking groups and got it banned from advertising on Facebook, but it ultimately paid off — putting the once-fringe newspaper on a path that perhaps only its leader, who claims to have supernatural powers, could have foreseen.
Funded through aggressive online and real-world marketing campaigns and big-money conservative donors, The Epoch Times now boasts to be the country’s fourth-largest newspaper by subscriber count. [Its circulation is not audited, so this is a 'boast' rather than a fact, but it could very well be true.]
Anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.calls The Epoch Times a daily read, among his most trusted news sources.
In July, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., recited the history of The Epoch Times into the congressional record. “This is all about one word: freedom,” Norman said.
The Epoch Times was a “supporting sponsor” for this year’s [CPAC] conference.
Epoch Times representatives [did not comment on the story, but] also deny an affiliation with Falun Gong, despite the two groups’ 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.
To his followers, [Falun Gong founder] Li [Hongzhi] is a God-like figure who can levitate, walk through walls and see into the future.
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According to NewsGuard, a nonpartisan company that rates the credibility of news sites, both The Epoch Times news and opinion articles “frequently include distorted, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims.”
“The Epoch Times is a comment on how much credibility is put in things with the right look and feel. Things like naming, branding and headlines,” said Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University. “The forms and formats of news are there. But the actual goods are not.”
“More and more, especially for the right-wing populists around the world, people approach truth and reality from the demand side,” Rosen said. “When there is the demand for something to be true, these media properties go out and meet it.”
The Epoch Times directed millions of dollars in advertising toward supporting President Donald Trump’s campaign and published dozens of articles parroting his lies about the election — resulting in huge growth to its audience and its coffers.
With the new [political] bedfellows came a new revenue stream. Though Falun Gong practitioners had been a reliable source of small donations in previous years, in 2020 the group started to receive gifts and grants from big money conservative donors.
The strategy garnered criticism from fact-checking groups and got it banned from advertising on Facebook, but it ultimately paid off — putting the once-fringe newspaper on a path that perhaps only its leader, who claims to have supernatural powers, could have foreseen.
Funded through aggressive online and real-world marketing campaigns and big-money conservative donors, The Epoch Times now boasts to be the country’s fourth-largest newspaper by subscriber count. [Its circulation is not audited, so this is a 'boast' rather than a fact, but it could very well be true.]
Anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.calls The Epoch Times a daily read, among his most trusted news sources.
In July, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., recited the history of The Epoch Times into the congressional record. “This is all about one word: freedom,” Norman said.
The Epoch Times was a “supporting sponsor” for this year’s [CPAC] conference.
Epoch Times representatives [did not comment on the story, but] also deny an affiliation with Falun Gong, despite the two groups’ 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.
To his followers, [Falun Gong founder] Li [Hongzhi] is a God-like figure who can levitate, walk through walls and see into the future.
---
According to NewsGuard, a nonpartisan company that rates the credibility of news sites, both The Epoch Times news and opinion articles “frequently include distorted, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims.”
“The Epoch Times is a comment on how much credibility is put in things with the right look and feel. Things like naming, branding and headlines,” said Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University. “The forms and formats of news are there. But the actual goods are not.”
“More and more, especially for the right-wing populists around the world, people approach truth and reality from the demand side,” Rosen said. “When there is the demand for something to be true, these media properties go out and meet it.”
