The feisty Epoch Times, as seen by the NYTimes
EYE ON THE MEDIA DEPT.
A glaring example of major fake news was the entire "Russiagate" hoax, in which the NYTimes to this day has played a prominent role. Despite the fact that recent revelations have confirmed what many critics on the genuine left and alternative press said long ago —at least as far back as 2016—about the blatant lies and highhanded hypocrisy of the charges leveled at Trump and Russia (volleys always fired from the right, of course, as attacking Trump from the left, where he is and was vulnerable was impossible for Democrats who are de facto accomplices in his criminal policies). Thus, like the rest of the media, the Times shows no sign of acknowledgement or repentance for its willful participation in what is by any measure a hybrid coup (failed), and many of his columns dealing with foreign and domestic politics still carry the usual Russiagate venom, as this passage in the piece we reproduce below attests:
Companies like Facebook and Google, which owns YouTube, have hardened their defenses to prevent another Russian-style influence campaign. But they have been more lenient with publishers based in the United States, out of concern that they will appear to be taking sides and stepping on the First Amendment. ...That reluctance has set off worries about a rise in so-called domestic disinformation, and left a loophole for American organizations to push partisan messages with relative impunity. The New York Times reported last monththat Russian trolls were already trying to exploit this loophole by buying Facebook pages from Americans in an attempt to influence the 2020 election.
As any fair-minded person can surmise, it takes some galactic-size gall or sociopathic hypocrisy to fret about the putative menace of relatively minuscule Russian disinformation or their largely imaginary meddling in our sacrosanct but virtually desiccated democracy (especially when compared to the meddling openly indulged by other "friendly" countries) while you are yourself a gigantic fount of lies literally driving the main misleading or defective narratives consumed by 99% of the US population.
What's more, public media are hardly any better. They are contaminated, too. Thus, when it comes to anything even slightly related to political news, NPR and PBS are now reliably partisan territory, mostly shilling for the Democrat POV, which is of course as far from reality as anyone can decently expect, albeit a tad less coarse than the Republican version. Just a few hours of exposure to the fare distributed by Frontline these days, or the fabled Newshour, suffice to prove this point. Equally hidden in this and other regular reports by the NYTimes—which continues to pretend we inhabit a democracy with a vibrant free press and a rational well meaning foreign policy—is the paper's complicity in gradually helping to suffocate actual free speech in America (something in which the vile Democrats have been especially aggressive, even promoting the jawboning of the social media crowd) and which the NYT has been doing almost in cahoots with the Washington Post, the Times' main partner in this crime. Consistent with this risible assumption, the Times and its staff routinely treat companies like Facebook and Google, behemoths in their own right, extensively involved in the algorithmic murder of dissident voices, as if they were above reproach, exemplary citizens of the civic/corporate community of imagined shared interests. I would like you to bear such things in mind when you read this report on The Epoch Times, which, ironically, reminds us how valuable good journalism can be as demonstrated by this somewhat damaged piece which still manages to be highly informative on a topic not easily accessed elsewhere. —P. Greanville
the shift
The paper, started by practitioners of Falun Gong, has turned to the video platform for an advertising blitz.
A YouTube ad for The Epoch Times, a pro-Trump news outlet, stars an employee, Roman Balmakov.
SAN FRANCISCO — Late last summer, YouTube users began noticing a surge of ads for an obscure news outlet called The Epoch Times. One ad touted an exposé of “Spygate,” a baseless conspiracy theory alleging that President Barack Obama and his allies placed a spy inside President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Another praised Mr. Trump’s interest in buying Greenland as a shrewd strategic move. A third claimed that the opioid epidemic in the United States was the result of a chemical warfare plot by the Chinese Communist Party.
“Anyone else getting a lot of Epoch Times ads?” a user on a YouTube-themed Reddit forum wrote.
“Every other ad on YouTube is a commercial for The Epoch Times pushing Trump,” wrote a Twitter user.
The ads, which sometimes ran for several minutes apiece, were a potpourri of right-wing polemics wrapped in “subscribe now” appeals. They seemed to be everywhere, running alongside videos of pranks, sports highlights and gaming streams. They claimed that The Epoch Times was “America’s fastest growing newspaper” and that, unlike the biased mainstream media, it would provide readers with the unvarnished truth.
The Epoch Times is one of the most mysterious fixtures of the pro-Trump media universe. It was started 20 years ago as a print newspaper by practitioners of Falun Gong, the persecuted Chinese spiritual practice. In recent years, the paper has made inroads into top Republican circles. Mr. Trump and his advisers have shared Epoch Times articles on their social media accounts, and last year, Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, sat for an interview with an Epoch Times editor. Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, called it “our favorite paper.”
The outlet’s profile was initially raised by a spending spree on Facebook — where it paid more than $1 million to promote its content. But in August, Facebook caught The Epoch Timestrying to evade its advertising transparency rules and barred it from taking out more ads.
Rather than retreating, the publication simply shifted to a different platform — YouTube — and continued its advertising blitz there.
The shifting tactics of partisan publishers pose a challenge to tech platforms in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Despite their efforts to limit the spread of misinformation, the platforms remain a powerful megaphone for publishers like The Epoch Times, which has used conspiracy theories and dubious growth tactics to expand its audience.
In all, the outlet has spent more than $1 million on YouTube ads, according to a person familiar with its spending, who discussed private information on the condition of anonymity.
In addition, data from Pathmatics, a social media analytics firm, suggests that The Epoch Times’s YouTube spending increased sharply in the months after Facebook banned its ads, and that its ads are reaching more people than many mainstream news organizations are. Gabe Gottlieb, the chief executive of Pathmatics, estimated that the outlet’s YouTube spending was “higher than household names like The New York Times, CNN, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.”
In an email exchange, Stephen Gregory, the publisher of the English-language Epoch Times in the United States, declined to comment on its YouTube budget or the number of its subscribers. He characterized the YouTube ads as “profitable” and said, “We advertise on YouTube because the advertisements are effective at selling Epoch Times newspaper subscriptions.”
Little is known about The Epoch Times’s finances and organizational structure. The nonprofit Epoch Times Association, which operates it, reported $8.1 million in revenue and $7.2 million in expenses on its 2017 public tax filings. An investigation by NBC Newslast summer found ties between the outlet and other Falun Gong-affiliated organizations, such as the Shen Yun dance performance series and the video broadcaster NTD, and said the organizations “appear to share missions, money and executives.”
Three former Epoch Times employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from the organization, said the outlet had long been financed by subscriptions, advertising and private donations. They described its staff as primarily Falun Gong practitioners, many of whom had little previous experience in journalism. Editorial employees, they said, were encouraged to attend weekly “Fa study” sessions outside work hours, during which they would gather to study the teachings of Falun Gong’s spiritual leader, Li Hongzhi.
An episode of “Declassified,” an Epoch Times series on YouTube featuring Gina Shakespeare.
The Epoch Times has long denied having direct ties to Falun Gong. Mr. Gregory said that the organization was primarily funded through subscriptions and ads, and that “donations are a small part of our income.”
The outlet’s heavy spending online, coupled with its unconventional background and its charged partisan content, has raised eyebrows among social media watchdogs.
“It’s quite strange,” said Nick Monaco, a disinformation researcher at the Institute for the Future, a tech research group in Palo Alto, Calif. “You don’t expect a media outlet to do this big of a push around an election.”
Companies like Facebook and Google, which owns YouTube, have hardened their defenses to prevent another Russian-style influence campaign. But they have been more lenient with publishers based in the United States, out of concern that they will appear to be taking sides and stepping on the First Amendment.
That reluctance has set off worries about a rise in so-called domestic disinformation, and left a loophole for American organizations to push partisan messages with relative impunity. The New York Times reported last monththat Russian trolls were already trying to exploit this loophole by buying Facebook pages from Americans in an attempt to influence the 2020 election.
There is no indication that The Epoch Times is coordinating with foreign entities, but its aggressive growth tactics have drawn scrutiny. Facebook cut off the outlet’s ability to buy ads after finding that it obscured the source of its spending. The social network also took actionagainst TheBL, a network of Facebook pages that was promoted through fake accounts, many of which had profile pictures generated with artificial intelligence. Facebook said it had found connections between TheBL and Epoch Media Group.
Mr. Gregory denied that The Epoch Times was linked to TheBL. He said it had been started by the former head of The Epoch Times’s Vietnamese affiliate, with whom his paper had since cut ties.
The Epoch Times can no longer advertise on Facebook, but it can still post there. On Monday, it published a story containing unproven suggestions of voter fraud ahead of the Iowa caucuses. The story was later debunked by fact checkers, but it received tens of thousands of likes, shares and comments.
YouTube appears to be friendlier turf than Facebook for The Epoch Times. Google, the parent company, features stories from The Epoch Times in its Google News search results. And the company does not require news publishers to disclose their spending on political ads, giving an added layer of privacy.
A YouTube spokeswoman, Charlotte Smith, confirmed that the platform has a carve-out for news publishers in its advertising transparency rules.
The Epoch Times was formed in part to speak out against the Chinese government’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Anticommunist China coverage is still featured prominently, but the publication has expanded to include a range of news, lifestyle and opinion pieces. Around the time of the 2016 election, it began running more articles supportive of Mr. Trump and critical of his opponents.
“I’m not exactly clear why they have become such a major pro-Trump voice,” said Haifeng Huang, a professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. “The reason may be multifaceted, but part of it is perhaps because they regard President Trump as tough on the Chinese government and therefore a natural ally for them.”
Mr. Gregory said, “We are independent and focus on truthful reporting, including on the Trump administration.”
Many ads for The Epoch Times appear to be aimed at older conservatives who have rejected the mainstream media as being too biased and left-wing. In one ad, two actors decide to buy subscriptions as holiday gifts for their parents. Another ad says the paper has just increased its font size by 20 percent.
That Epoch Times ad, a three-minute subscription appeal called “Truth, Tradition and Crosswords,” stars an employee, Roman Balmakov. Mr. Balmakov was previously the circulation manager; according to Mr. Gregory, he is now being trained as a video journalist.
“Are you tired of the media spinning the truth and pushing false narratives upon you?” Mr. Balmakov asks in the video. He goes on to explain that “while the mainstream media has been pushing the whole ‘Trump colluding with Russia’ narrative, The Epoch Times has been covering Spygate, the true story of collusion.”
The ad has been viewed more than 20 million times.
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