The Fourth Largest Paper in the United States? A Dicey Right-Wing Rag Run By Chinese Religious Group Falun Gong
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Once a name known only to readers on the fringe, The Epoch Times jumped on the bandwagon of former President Donald Trump in 2020 and has since become the fourth-largest newspaper in the United States.
NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny has a deep dive into the strange origins of The Epoch Times, which has become a right-wing favorite as well as a go-to media source for conspiracy theorists such as presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And while this is not the first time NBC has dug into the mystical backers of The Epoch Times, which began as a humble anti-Communist leaflet in China distributed by a “religious group” called Falun Gong, it is news to find out how well it’s doing. And it’s doing very, very well:
The nonprofit has amassed a fortune, growing its revenue by a staggering 685% in two years, to $122 million in 2021, according to the group’s most recent tax records. …
The group reported $76 million in subscription revenue in 2021, compared to nearly $7 million in 2019. A former employee of a regional Epoch Times operation who asked not to be identified because he feared retribution said that in order to send the papers to the most likely customers, they bought lists of addresses from data brokers, specifically for conservatives aged 60 and over. And many of the new subscribers are seniors, according to an employee’s account shared at a Falun Gong conference.
Its explosion in readers and paid subscribers occurred in tandem with the 2020 re-election campaign of Trump, whom Falun Gong believes was “sent from heaven” to end Communism, as well as the Covid pandemic. Its editorial slant leans towards January 6 conspiracy theories, conspiracies surrounding climate change, and “a documentary-style film alleging widespread vaccine injury and death and an exposé of an alleged world government agenda to harm farmers, cull the population and force survivors to eat bugs.”
The story attributes the massive growth of The Epoch Times to aggressive online and real-world marketing campaigns and big-money conservative donors,” as well as its appearance as a legitimate news site that hires veteran news employees.
Zadrozny was told by representatives for The Epoch Times that the paper is no longer affiliated with Falun Gong, even though “financial and organizational ties” prove otherwise.
