Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Can you share with us what year you dropped out of a shit HS?

The Epoch Times is a far-right[1] international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement.[29] The newspaper, based in New York City, is part of the Epoch Media Group, which also operates New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television.[30] The Epoch Times has websites in 35 countries but is blocked in mainland China.[31]

The Epoch Times opposes the Chinese Communist Party,[32][33][22] promotes far-right politicians in Europe,[8][10][22] and has championed former President Donald Trump in the U.S.;[34][35] a 2019 report by NBC News showed it to be the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign.
[30][36][22] The Epoch Times frequently promotes other Falun Gong-affiliated groups, such as the performing arts company Shen Yun.[34][24][37] The Epoch Media Group's news sites and YouTube channels have spread misinformation and conspiracy theories, such as QAnon and anti-vaccine misinformation,[34][40] and false claims of fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election.[43]

COVID-19 coverage and misinformation
See also: Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic § Wuhan lab origin

The Epoch Times has spread misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in print and via social media including Facebook and YouTube.[98][99] Raquel Miguel of the European watchdog EU DisinfoLab said in 2022: "The Epoch Times has played a noticeable role in transmitting and amplifying many anti-vaccine narratives".[22]

It has promoted anti-CCP rhetoric and conspiracy theories about the pandemic, for example through an eight-page special edition called "How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World", which was distributed unsolicited in April 2020 to mail customers in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.[100][101]

In the newspaper, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is known as the "CCP virus",[98][100][93] and a commentary in the paper posed the question, "is the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan an accident occasioned by weaponizing the virus at that [Wuhan P4 virology] lab?"[98][100] The paper's editorial board suggested that COVID-19 patients cure themselves by "condemning the CCP" and "maybe a miracle will happen".[71]

In France, "special" French-language print editions of The Epoch Times were distributed in 2021 during anti-Health pass protests.[75] In Germany, The Epoch Times has published articles blasting the legitimacy of PCR tests and promoting conspiracy theories about vaccination mishaps.[22]

The misinformation tracker NewsGuard called the French page of The Epoch Times one of the "super-spreaders" of COVID-19 misinformation on Facebook, citing an Epoch Times article that suggested the virus was artificially created.[102][103] NewsGuard later changed the rating of the English edition of The Epoch Times from green to red.[31]

A February 17, 2020, Epoch Times story shared a map from the internet that falsely alleged massive sulfur dioxide releases from crematoria during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, speculating that 14,000 bodies may have been burned.[104] A fact check by AFP reported that the map was a NASA forecast taken out of context.[104]

A widely viewed video released by The Epoch Times on April 7, 2020, was flagged by Facebook as "partly false" for "the unsupported hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 is a bioengineered virus released from a Wuhan research laboratory." The video featured Judy Mikovits, an anti-vaccination activist.[105][106] The fact-checker Health Feedback said of the video that "several of its core scientific claims are false and its facts, even when accurate, are often presented in a misleading way."[99]

On April 29, 2020, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) story reported that some Canadians were upset to receive a special edition of The Epoch Times that called COVID-19 the "CCP virus". The CBC later retracted a headline on its story that had quoted a recipient saying the special edition was "racist and inflammatory", and the CBC also retracted a claim that The Epoch Times edition had concluded that COVID-19 was a bioweapon.[100][107] Opinion columns published by conservative tabloid The Toronto Sun accused the CBC of bias against The Epoch Times[108][109] and said the CBC's report may have misled readers into thinking The Epoch Times was spreading anti-Asian sentiment.[109]

In February 2021, an investigator for EU DisinfoLab found that Tierra Pura, a Spanish-language website first launched in Argentina in March 2020 that publishes COVID-19 misinformation, is closely linked to The Epoch Times and Falun Gong. At the time, the site was the most shared outlet in Spain's COVID-19-skeptic Telegram channels and groups. The Epoch Times and Tierra Pura denied being linked.[110][111][112]

In January 2022, the German edition of The Epoch Times amplified accusations by German activist Steffen Löhnitz that the Austrian government had deliberately inflated infection numbers to justify a lockdown. It said Löhnitz had been digging up "correct numbers" and reported his claims of "massive fraud" as fact. The Epoch Times story was shared by figures from Querdenken, Germany's anti-lockdown movement.[22]

Social media bans

A shit load of 'em.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times