Oddbean

My experience with Epoch is from over a year ago. Mostly engaging in tolerable partisanship. They exist primarily to be against the CCP. It is refreshing to a certain audience. Spams email boxes incessantly. There is a difference among authors (C through A), and between the news-anchor style video (C+ B-), the long form interviews (B+ A-), and the investigative reports (A- A). Generally very much factual, especially compared to mainstream. Would be an example of the most extremely partisan news that could survive in an unmanipulated world, but in this one it appears as one of few that are really trying to report truth, even if slanted to the right intentionally as a counterbalance to the rest of the landscape.

a) sauce b) why are you responding to my post with that claim? c) it is possible to accept funding and not be beholden to the agenda of the funder d) I am confident in my ability to verify factual information and debunk non-factual information / identify disseminators who are not independent based on their output, I don't need secondary 'guilt by association' maybes to help e) cia is not like a private foundation, there are uniquely many arms that have no effect on each other and projects, both public and covert, that have nothing to say about the actions of each other. IOW it is important to show where the funding came from and who authorized it, if there is a trail at all.

Thanks for sharing, interesting. Most of article's claims fall under 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' and easily explained as the result of aligned interests / incentives between groups rather than evidence of a direct relationship between the members, much less full control by one over another. It strangely plays apologist for the Chinese establishment while painting loose connections between Falun Gong, Epoch Times, the CIA, and the Trump administration. It reads as though it could easily be a Snopes equivalent, however, and it is only because I know it's target to be a publication willing to report what so many others would not, one that is an enemy of a country with an advanced understanding of propaganda itself, that I suspect that it might be. That said, it's a great place to start research for those interested in trying to take a look at the facts involved, and it does appear there are 'ties' between some members / arms / iterations of each group mentioned. And don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's plenty of bad actors around in all - life is rarely a simple good guy bad guy story. The article goes a bit short of finding the relevant details by itself, stopping short and painting a one-sided picture of guilt by association, rather than a more balanced journalistic approach (par for the course these days). That's what most readers will do too - they don't want or can't go to archives in multiple languages and territories to figure it all out - they just want to say "Epoch = Trump = Falun Gong = CIA are 100% bad, therefore enemies of them are 100% good" ... and this article wraps up such preconcieved notions nicely.