An Epoch Times billboard on I-196 west of Grand Rapids. (Photo by Rose White | MLive)Rose White | MLive
By Rose White | rwhite@mlive.com
They all look the same.
Identical yellow and blue billboards dotting Michigan highways proclaim in tall letters, “The Epoch Times #1 Trusted News,” with a photo of a man wearing a collared blue shirt and a sweater.
Although it’s a simple message, the truth behind The Epoch Times is a little more complicated.
“It’s worth knowing that they are not independent media,” said Priyanjana Bengani, a senior researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism whose work includes researching partisan local media.
The Epoch Times is a news outlet affiliated with a Chinese religious movement called Falun Gong, reporting from the New York Times and NBC News shows. Banned in China, Falun Gong is known for being a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, owning the Shen Yun dance troupe and its “God-like” leader Li Hongzhi.
John Tang, a Chinese-American reported Falun Gong practitioner, founded The Epoch Times from his Georgia basement in 2000 to tell “the world about the destructiveness of socialism and communism” and “expose the disinformation and human rights violations of the Chinese Communist Party,” he wrote in a letter to readers.
But in recent years, the once small, anti-CCP newspaper has become a multi-million-dollar right-wing “influence machine” that claims to have the fourth-largest subscriber count in the United States.
“They’re known to take narratives driven by the far right and push them,” Bengani said.
After the 2020 election, The Epoch Times published a range of “misleading ‘voter fraud’ narratives,” The Election Integrity Partnership found, including falsehoods that large numbers of people were voting twice and discarded ballots were evidence of fraud. It has also published misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, 5G cell phone towers and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
NewsGuard, a tool that rates news sites, found The Epoch Times frequently includes “distorted, misleading or unsubstantiated claims.” Another site, Media Bias, rated the newspaper “right biased and questionable” for publishing “pseudoscience, the promotion of propaganda and conspiracy theories.”
Facebook also banned The Epoch Times from advertising five years ago after NBC News reported the outlet bought $2 million of ads promoting former President Donald Trump.
Despite that, The Epoch Times claims to be a source of independent journalism that stands “outside of political interests.” But Bengani says adopting the “aesthetic of an independent outlet” doesn’t make it one.
“It’s a tactic that’s being adopted far more nowadays by media outlets who want to push forth narratives including that of being trustworthy sources,” Bengani said.
The Epoch Times billboards have been spotted in Michigan, Minnesota and Colorado in recent months. A couple of Reddit posts have flagged them in Grand Rapids. And X users have noticed “every billboard in LA is an Epoch Times ad,” a “disconcerting” number of billboards in San Antonio and “Albuquerque is filled with The Epoch Times billboards for some reason.”
The unidentified man on the billboards appears to be staff reporter Joshua Philipp.
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Tax filings show the company’s ad spending jumped during the last election cycle going from $1.9 million in 2019 to $17 million in 2020. A fraction of that, only $46,000, was spent in 2018. These ad budgets swelled as Epoch Times’ revenue grew from $3.8 million to $127 million over seven years.
The Epoch Times did not respond to a request for comment on why Michigan has been targeted with its billboard campaign. Outfront Media, the billboard company, did not confirm how many signs Epoch Times leased in Michigan.
But in a competitive election with consequential races, Michigan will likely be blanketed with political advertising this year.
“It’s still early, but the signs are there that Michigan is going to see hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising,” said David Dulio, a political science professor from Oakland University.
The presidential race in Michigan has been won by thin margins the past two elections. Republicans are hoping to flip a Senate seat that has been filled by Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow since 2001. And there are several U.S. House seats that could determine control of Congress.
“Competitiveness and an importance in terms of majority makers are why all eyes are on Michigan,” Dulio said.
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Some advertising picked up this week when former President Donald Trump stopped in Grand Rapids, including billboards and TV ads from a $50 million Republican Voters Against Trump campaign and a billboard from MAGA Michigan Pac to “support a strong border.”
“Spending money to move a small portion of (voters) could have dramatic results,” Dulio said.
With the high political stakes, Bengani says “people who have vested interests in elections” are exploiting a vulnerable news media landscape. More than 130 newspapers closed or merged last year, research found, and over half the counties in the United States have one or no local news outlets.
“On both the left and right are folks who have end games during this election cycle,” she said.
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