Pandemic relief aid went to media that promoted COVID misinformation

Epoch Media Group

ProPublica’s database shows that between $150,000 and $350,000 of federal coronavirus bailout funds were granted to the Epoch Media Group, a private news and entertainment company with close ties to the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, which is banned by the Chinese Communist Party.

Epoch Media Group owns the Epoch Times, a once-obscure free newspaper and website critical of communist China. In recent years, it has built one of the biggest followings of any news outlet on social media through its aggressive embrace of Facebook, conservative politics and in particular, Donald Trump. NBC News reported in August 2019 that the Epoch Times was the second largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook ads after the Trump campaign.

According to NBC News, the Epoch Times’ “network of news sites and YouTube channels has made it a powerful conduit for the internet’s fringier conspiracy theories, including anti-vaccination propaganda and QAnon, to reach the mainstream.”

The joint analysis conducted by Alethea and the Global Disinformation Index also identified the Epoch Times as one of the top 100 websites producing false, misleading or conspiratorial content about the coronavirus pandemic. One example of such content is a Dec. 2 article titled “Americans Are Suffering ‘Delusional Psychosis’ About CCP Virus, Psychiatrist Claims,” which, the Alethea and GDI researchers said, “falsely claims that government officials were broadcasting “misinformation and exaggeration about the lethality” of the virus.

In an email to Yahoo News, Epoch Times spokeswoman Dana Cheng denied that the Epoch Times has published false, misleading or conspiratorial content about COVID-19, writing that, with respect to the Dec. 2 article, “the claim that it ‘falsely states that government officials have been broadcasting misinformation and exaggeration about the lethality’ of COVID-19 is taken out of context.”

“This article is about an opinion from an expert, which should be presented as one side of the discussion,” she wrote.

However, the article in question is not presented as an op-ed or blog post, but is labeled “U.S. News” and was written by Epoch Times congressional correspondent Mark Tapscott. The opinions reflected in the article are not those of a public health official or well-known infectious disease expert, but Dr. Mark McDonald, a Los Angeles-based child and adolescent psychiatrist.

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This particular article is not the only piece of false, misleading or conspiratorial content that the Epoch Times has published about what it calls the “CCP Virus,” referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

In April, the Epoch Times published a 54-minute “documentary” called “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus,” which sought to promote a number of unfounded claims about the genesis of COVID-19, including the repeatedly debunked theory that the virus was bioengineered in a Chinese lab. Scientific studies of the genetic makeup of the virus that causes COVID-19 have overwhelmingly concluded that it was not created in a lab, but originated through natural processes.

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Facebook posts promoting the Epoch Times video have been flaggedfor containing false information. However, the video can still be viewed via the social network, as well as on multiple YouTube channels, where one post alone has garnered more than 4.5 million views.

The Epoch Times’ Cheng dismissed the action taken by Facebook as the wrong standard to use as the “measurement for good journalism.”