Up for a brief journalism quiz? Of course you are — or so I will assume. Let’s begin.
Name a news outlet that publishes separate English-language additions for the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe, while also offering its product in 21 other languages spoken around the globe. That’s even more than offered by Reuters, the most widely translated international wire service, which offers 16.
Need more hints? OK.
This mystery outlet is run by a faith group that claims tens of thousands of adherents in more than 70 nations. The group burst on to the scene in the late 20th century and for years now has been harshly persecuted by its homeland’s ruthlessly authoritarian government.
Additionally, this same faith group sponsors a traveling cultural dance extravaganza (no peeking until the quiz is over, please) that, until the coronavirus epidemic largely shut down live performances, advertised widely on American television and at local malls.
Still in the dark?
It’s motto is “Truth and Tradition” and, as of this writing (this past Monday) it’s declined to join the preponderance of other news media — including Fox, heretofore among the staunchest of pro-Trump media platforms — that have called former Vice President Joseph Biden the 2020 presidential election winner.
As of this date, our mystery news source has even declined to place Michigan or Wisconsin in the Biden win column — not to mention Pennsylvania, Arizona or Nevada — maintaining that it will not do so until all of President Donald Trump’s legal ballot challenges have been resolved.
Have you guessed the platform in question?
The answer is The Epoch Times, published by the spiritual, and fervently anti-Beijing, movement known primarily in the West as Falun Gong. The movement, while a relatively new formulation, draws its philosophical roots from ancient Chinese Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian and folk traditions.
Over the years, GetReligion writers have mentioned Falun Gong — along with underground Christian churches, Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, and others — in dozens of posts focused on the persecution of religious minority groups in China.
So why mention Falun Gong, also know as Falun Dafna, yet again? Because of a recent in-depth New York Times story about The Epoch Times that went largely overlooked when it was published during the hectic run up to Election Day.
Given Epoch’s grand ambitions, and its growing influence in American conservative political circles, the story is worthy of closer attention. Here’s the article’s opening graphs. This bite is lengthy but important, as it pretty much sums up the story’s overall message.
For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers.
The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation.
First, it embraced President Trump, treating him as an ally in Falun Gong’s scorched-earth fight against China’s ruling Communist Party, which banned the group two decades ago and has persecuted its members ever since. Its relatively staid coverage of U.S. politics became more partisan, with more articles explicitly supporting Mr. Trump and criticizing his opponents.
Around the same time, The Epoch Times bet big on another powerful American institution: Facebook. The publication and its affiliates employed a novel strategy that involved creating dozens of Facebook pages, filling them with feel-good videos and viral clickbait, and using them to sell subscriptions and drive traffic back to its partisan news coverage.
In an April 2017 email to the staff obtained by The New York Times, the paper’s leadership envisioned that the Facebook strategy could help turn The Epoch Times into “the world’s largest and most authoritative media.” It could also introduce millions of people to the teachings of Falun Gong, fulfilling the group’s mission of “saving sentient beings.”
Today, The Epoch Times and its affiliates are a force in right-wing media, with tens of millions of social media followers spread across dozens of pages and an online audience that rivals those of The Daily Caller and Breitbart News, and with a similar willingness to feed the online fever swamps of the far right.
Yeah, yeah. I know.
The Times story betrays its bias. But just so you know, my bias is far closer to that of the New York Times than the Epoch Times. However my intent here is not to debate political world views or — and this takes some self-constraint, I admit — to judge the relative accuracy of the two publications.
Rather it’s to alert readers to a would-be media political powerhouse that, if it is successful, you will hear much more about in the coming years. Given Trump and his supporters’ refusal so far to admit defeat and end the Republican presidential reelection campaign, I suspect Epoch may soon become much better known to the general public.
Former Breitbart and Trump official and advisor Stephen K. Bannon, said of Epoch: ”They’ll be the top conservative news site in two years. They punch way above their weight, they have the readers, and they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with.”
Why is this important?
Epoch fans are quick to point to the publication’s early stories about China’s harvesting of body parts from political prisoners, including imprisoned Falun Gong believers. Beijing says it has ended that nefarious practice, and to the extent Epoch contributed to that it is to be commended.
But that’s the past. What is relevant now is Epoch Times’ journalism from here on out. Will this newsroom produce information based on sources that ring true? Will it be a reliable information source for its conservative readers?
Will it be content to conquer the web’s rabble rouser cohort, happy to stir the pot no matter the stakes?
Will it editorialize in favor of a more confrontational, and potentially dangerous, U.S. approach toward China? Or, if it gets the broader media acceptance it craves, will Epoch Times moderate itself to make its non-Western faith component more acceptable to its Western readers?
Who can say, at this point? But the possibilities are interesting.
So read the entire New York Times story for background. And stay tuned. There’s a new player on the field that may give the old hands a run for their money.
ybvdadminuser
