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ICYMI: This is a story about how an obscure, spiritually driven, anti- #China publication became a pro-Trump bullhorn. It is also the story about how a disaffected American millennial wound up as a cog in its propaganda machine.
Inside the #EpochTimes: https://magazine.atavist.com/stranger-than-fiction-epoch-times-falun-gong-trump-election-2020
Inside the #EpochTimes: https://magazine.atavist.com/stranger-than-fiction-epoch-times-falun-gong-trump-election-2020
Highlights in this #thread: "Their work was like that of any number of millennials paid to generate content to feed the insatiable appetite of social media. Each team member sat in a small cubicle and churned out content, trying to reach 100,000 clicks per week."
"Klett didn’t think much about Falun Gong or how it shaped his job. It wasn’t his goal to empathize with the movement’s belief system, which, as far as he could tell, was at odds with his own. He just wanted to reach his weekly target of 100,000 clicks."
"The paper was a purportedly objective outlet with an unconditional bias made obscure to outsiders. One way that bias manifested was in prohibitions on certain content...Reporters could not cover modern music or art...Stories about the LGBTQ community were to be avoided."
"An unspoken enthusiasm for the Republican candidate had taken hold in the newsroom. There had been a palpable shift in the paper’s editorial direction, and it seemed to come straight from the top."
"While other media outlets reported on Trump’s outlandish and incendiary Twitter behavior, Klett said that his editors discouraged him from covering it. "
"Klett told his colleague that the word 'greatness' was biased and a regurgitation of Trump’s campaign slogan. The colleague, according to Klett, said that Gregory [the Epoch Times' publisher] had inserted the line."
"Journalists from the print side—mostly young men who practiced Falun Gong and had worked at the paper for a while—were becoming more brazen in their support of far-right ideas. One colleague shared a video by internet pundit Stefan Molyneux."
"The Epoch Times... has capitalized on Trumpism, hoping to promote its versions of truth and tradition and to tip the balance of power in Falun Gong’s information war with Beijing."
Some Epoch Times employees have described a staff compound in New Jersey, where Falun Gong acolytes who work in service of "clarifying truth" for Master Li Hongzhi by way of the newspaper live together.
One wrote: “I see that in the coming years the amount of work will be daunting as the Epoch Times is expanding across the US and the world.... As long as I don’t impede Master, there shouldn’t be anything that we can’t do.”
