卫报:大妓院制造假新闻反对美民主党和中共
引自,英国卫报 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/30/falun-gong-media-epoch-times-democrats-chinese-communists 6park.com与法轮功结盟的媒体发布有关美国民主党和中国共产党的假新闻 6park.com据媒体监管机构称,被认为与中国宗教运动有关《大纪元》媒体,利用美国的自由权利,发挥反对中共的影响力行动的一部分。 6park.com一个与中国国家长达数十年冲突的宗教运动的法轮功结盟的美国新闻媒体,在将关于美国民主党,选举欺诈和共产主义者的阴谋论点推广到美国支持特朗普的权利方面,已经越来越成功。 6park.com专家说,在未来的怡情之后,有线新闻频道NTD,特别是多媒体企业大纪元,新唐人媒体,可能会加大对共和党的支持,使乔·拜登和民主党与中共联系起来,并加紧努力影响美国对中国的舆论。 6park.com据美国媒体监督机构Media Matters总裁兼首席执行官Angelo Carusone称,这些媒体,尤其是《大纪元》,一直对中国持批评态度,而且偏向右倾,但在2016年大选中,这些媒体通常不被认为是有什么问题。但是在Facebook等社交媒体平台上散布谎言。 6park.com但在一次电话交谈中,Carusone表示,《大纪元》从2017年开始大力转向引发布阴谋论叙事的材料,并开始加大对媒体的广告投入,以确保其信息在YouTube等平台上脱颖而出。 6park.comCarusone说:“在社交媒体网站针对假新闻媒体采取行动之后,这些假新闻被阻挡。” “ Epoch Times的出色表现就是有效的突破这些阻挡。” 而且,他说,他们通过将资金交给各种大型技术平台来确保自己的市场地位。 6park.com在《大纪元》(Epoch Times)在2019年花费约1100万美元在Facebook广告上之后,该平台以其违反了政治广告透明度规则为由禁止他们进行广告。但是,它只是将其业务转移到其他地方:根据Media Matters分析的来自Pathmatics的数据到目前为止,《大纪元时报》在数字广告上花费了大约930,000美元,用于宣传视频和桌面展示广告。他们的支出中有超过95%用于YouTube。 6park.com到2020年以及拜登政府的早期,大纪元时代和NTD都推广了与QAnon运动有关的阴谋论,所谓的亨特·拜登的国际关系受到损害,甚至出售概述了半被遗忘的阴谋论的商品,例如“铀一号” ”认为,美国国务卿希拉里·克林顿(Hillary Clinton)策划了向俄罗斯利益出售铀矿的计划,以换取向克林顿基金会的捐款。 6park.com尽管像美国一号新闻和Newsmax这样的美国右翼机构通过在右翼基层中提供看似无底洞的食欲来获利,这些食材将美国政治描绘成一团精英阴谋,但Carusone表示,将与法轮功结盟的机构视为一个错误的做法是错误的。 6park.com他说,《大纪元时报》的主要目标(现在已在36个国家/地区的非营利网络监督下出版)不是要产生利润,而是要进行长期而广泛的“影响力运营”。反过来,影响行动的目标是“煽动反中共的情绪”。 6park.com根据Carusone的说法,通过利用美国政治中深刻的党派两极分化以及在美国权利上运用悠久的反共传统,这些媒体试图将拜登和民主党与激进的左翼运动联系起来,然后发表“任何将他们与中共影响力联系起来的东西”,但这些却是都虚假的假新闻。 6park.com他设想共和党人将与这些媒体合作的可能性(他们也传播了有关Covid-19大流行的大量假消息),问“乔·拜登将如何处理中国引起冠状病毒的问题?” 6park.com尽管没有直接合作的证据,但他们已经表明愿意与前特朗普助手史蒂夫·班农和亿万富翁中国流亡者郭文贵(也称为迈尔斯·郭)之类反华媒体,后者通过咨询合同和捐赠。 6park.com早在2020年1月,班农和郭文贵便试图传播一种说法,称新冠疫情是由中国的生物武器引起的,无论是在班农的广播节目还是在他们的共享媒体事业G News上。在《大纪元》之后的四月,纪录片重复了生物武器的主张,并利用进一步的机会声称中国政府无意中引发了这一大流行病。 6park.comCarusone认为,对现有阴谋叙事的这种机会主义重读是这些媒体的特征。他说:“他们不是司机,他们没有编织新的阴谋论,他们是在放大已经存在的东西。” 6park.com这项工作的资源似乎越来越多。尽管许多《大纪元》非营利组织的财务安排各不相同,但根据《卫报》查看的IRS 990声明,总部设在纽约市的原始《大纪元》协会在2016年至2019年之间每年的收入和捐款都在急剧增加。在2016年,该协会的收入为390万美元,在2019年,他们的收入为1540万美元,扣除薪水和开支后清除了186万美元。 6park.com两家公司都没有明确证实它与法轮功的联系,法轮功是一个从所谓的“气功”运动中诞生的宗教组织,该运动教奉信徒练习呼吸,运动和冥想练习。但是据报道,前雇员说他们是由运动的拥护者经营的,法轮功的创始人和领导人李洪志以及运动中的其他人对网点的反华信息施加了强大的影响力。 6park.com除了英语商店,中文商店和一个舞蹈团也传播了小组的信息。 6park.com尽管1990年代法轮功出现在中国,但其创始人现在居住在美国。 6park.com大纪元时代始于2000年,当时是印刷报纸,一直是中共的坚定反对者。自1990年代末以来,中共一直迫害法轮功及其他相关的气宗运动团体。 6park.com该报纸由华裔美国法轮功信徒约翰·唐(John Tang)和一群志趣相投的商人在佐治亚州成立。在接下来的半个十年中,它向国际扩展。 6park.comCarusone表示,NTD和大纪元(Epoch Times)的产出中阴谋信息的强化,加上对特朗普主义的拥护,可能使它们在未来几个月内最右翼的集团重组并走向2022年中期选举时更具影响力。 6park.com“对于以一个大反派为中心的世界版本的需求令人难以置信。” 他说。“ Epoch Times提供了非常简单的叙述。” 6park.comFalun Gong-aligned media push fake news about Democrats and Chinese communists 6park.comThe Epoch Times, believed to be linked to the Chinese religious movement, is part of an anti-CCP influence operation tapping into the US right, according to a media watchdog 6park.com US news outlets aligned with Falun Gong, a religious movement locked in a decades-long conflict with the Chinese state, have been increasingly successful in promoting conspiracy narratives about Democrats, election fraud and communists to the pro-Trump right in America. 6park.com 6park.comExperts say that in a future post-pandemic landscape, the cable news channel NTD, and especially the multimedia enterprise the Epoch Times, may amplify the efforts of Republicans to link Joe Biden and Democrats to the Chinese Communist party (CCP), and to harden US public opinion against China. 6park.comAccording to Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of the media watchdog Media Matters for America, these outlets, and especially the Epoch Times, were always critical of China, and somewhat right-leaning, but were not commonly counted as problematic during the 2016 election as spreading falsehoods across social media platforms like Facebook. 6park.com 6park.comBut in a telephone conversation, Carusone said Epoch Times pivoted hard from 2017 towards material which stoked conspiracy narratives, and began spending freely in order to make sure that their message was prominent on platforms like YouTube. 6park.com 6park.com“After social media sites moved against the fake news outlets, it left a gap,” Carusone said. “What Epoch Times did so well was to step right into that gap.” And, he says, they secured their niche by handing money to big tech platforms. 6park.comAfter Epoch Times spent about $11m on Facebook ads in 2019, the platform banned them from advertising on the grounds that they had violated rules around transparency in political advertising. But the outlet simply took its business elsewhere: according to data from Pathmatics that was analyzed by Media Matters 6park.com 6park.comIn the year to date, Epoch Times has spent an estimated $930,000 in digital advertising promoting videos and desktop display ads. Over 95% of their spending was on YouTube. 6park.com 6park.comThrough 2020 and into the early life of the Biden administration, Epoch Times and NTD alike promoted conspiracy theories related to the QAnon movement, the supposedly compromising international ties of Hunter Biden, and even sold merchandise outlining half-forgotten conspiracy theories such as “Uranium One”, which held that Hillary Clinton, as US secretary of state, engineered the sale of uranium deposits to Russian interests in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation. 6park.com 6park.comWhile US rightwing outlets like One America News and Newsmax have profited by supplying the seemingly bottomless appetite among the rightwing grassroots for material that depicts American politics as a tangle of elite conspiracies, Carusone says it is a mistake to view the Falung Gong-aligned outlets as normal media companies. 6park.com 6park.comThe principal goal of Epoch Times – now publishing in 36 countries under the supervision of a network of non-profits – is not to generate profit, he says, but to mount a long and broad “influence operation”. And the goal of that influence operation, in turn, is “to foment anti-CCP sentiment”. 6park.com 6park.comBy leveraging the deep partisan polarization in US politics, and by tapping into a long tradition of anticommunism on the American right, according to Carusone, the outlets have sought to link Biden and the Democratic party to radical leftist movements like antifa, and then publish “anything that ties them to CCP influence”, however spurious. 6park.com 6park.comHe envisages the possibility that Republicans will cooperate with these outlets – who have also spread significant amounts of disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic – to ask “what is Joe Biden going to do about China causing coronavirus?” 6park.com 6park.comAlthough there is no evidence of direct cooperation, they have already shown a willingness to echo anti-China messaging with the likes of the former Trump aide Steve Bannon and billionaire Chinese exile Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, who has financed Bannon’s activities through consulting contracts and donations. 6park.comFrom as early as January 2020, Bannon and Kwok were attempting to spread a narrative alleging that the pandemic was caused by a Chinese bioweapon, both on Bannon’s radio program and on their shared media venture, G News. The Epoch Times followed that April with a documentary that repeated the bioweapon claims, and have taken further opportunities to allege, without basis, that China’s government started the pandemic deliberately. 6park.com 6park.comAccording to Carusone, such opportunistic retreading of existing conspiracy narratives is characteristic of these outlets. “They’re not drivers, they’re not weaving new conspiracy theories, they’re amplifying what’s already out there,” he said. 6park.com 6park.comThis effort appears to be increasingly well-resourced. Although the financial arrangements of the many Epoch Times non-profits vary, the original Epoch Times Association Inc, headquartered in New York City, saw revenues and donations increase sharply every year between 2016 and 2019 according to IRS 990 declarations inspected by the Guardian. While in 2016, the association took in $3.9m in revenue, in 2019 they brought in $15.4m, and cleared $1.86m after salaries and expenses. 6park.com 6park.comNeither outlet has ever explicitly confirmed its links to Falun Gong, a religious organization which emerged from the so-called “qijong” movement, which teaches adherents to practice breathing, movement and meditation exercises. But former employees reportedly say that they are run by movement adherents, and that Falun Gong founder and leader, Li Hongzhi, and others in the movement’s hierarchy exercise a powerful influence over the outlets’ anti-China messaging. 6park.com 6park.comAlongside the English language outlets, Chinese language outlets and a dance troupe spread the group’s messages. 6park.com 6park.comThough Falun Gong emerged in China in the 1990s, its founder now lives in the US. 6park.com 6park.comThe Epoch Times, which began as a print newspaper in 2000, has been a steadfast opponent of the CCP, which has persecuted Falun Gong and other, related qijong movement groups since the late 1990s. 6park.com 6park.comThe newspaper was founded in Georgia by a Chinese-American Falun Gong adherent, John Tang, and a group of like-minded businessmen. Over the next half-decade it expanded internationally. 6park.com 6park.comCarusone says that the intensification of conspiracy messaging in the output of NTD and the Epoch Times, along with their embrace of Trumpism could make them more influential as the far right regroups in the coming months and heads towards the 2022 midterm elections. 6park.com 6park.com“There’s an incredible demand for a version of the world centered on one big villain.” he said. “Epoch Times provides that very simple narrative.”
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