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A former mayor got a free issue of the Epoch Times. Imagine his shock to see his name inside

Adam Walsh/CBC
Adam Walsh/CBC

Curiosity about a free newspaper in his mailbox turned into surprise when former St. John's mayor Dennis O'Keefe found his name printed inside — in a story that said he, along with the mayor of Calgary and other officials, was a target of interest for the Chinese Communist Party.

"I couldn't believe it," said O'Keefe outside his St. John's home while holding a recent copy of the Epoch Times, which was distributed this month for free to households in the region.

"I mean, I've had a lot of surprises in my life, believe me. But this one really takes the cake."

The article said O'Keefe's name was found in a 2019 document that came from the Foreign Affairs Office in Daqing, a city in northeastern China. The paper said it obtained the document that included names "spanning a wide range of sectors and countries in which the Chinese regime seeks to cultivate talent."

O'Keefe retired as mayor before the 2017 municipal election.

"It's just inexplicable," said O'Keefe who called the article "terribly misleading," and said nobody from the Epoch Times contacted him for comment.

Submitted by a Canada Post carrier
Submitted by a Canada Post carrier

The Epoch Times has been distributing free copies of its paper throughout Canada over the course of the last year in an effort to grow subscribers. The newspaper has often been controversial for publishing articles that promote unfounded conspiracy theories, some of them embraced by alt-right groups, and many of them about China. The newspaper has, for instance, promoted the belief that the novel coronavirus was produced in a lab in China, and that the American deep state stole November's presidential election from Donald Trump.

What is the Epoch Times?

The Epoch Times started 20 years ago in what the paper called a "response to communist repression and censorship in China." The paper is headquartered in New York and says it operates in 22 languages in 36 countries.

Simon van Zuylen-Wood, a New York based journalist who recently did a deep dive on the paper's embrace of Donald Trump for The Atlantic magazine, said the paper has found favour with the conspiratorial strains of the American right wing.

His Atlantic article was called "MAGA-land's Favorite Newspaper," with the subhead, "How the Epoch Times became a pro-Trump propaganda machine in an age of plague and insurrection."

In a phone interview with CBC News, Zuylen-Wood called the Epoch Times a fast-growing newspaper that changed tack in the Trump era.

He said what makes it unique is that it's backed and run by members of the Falun Gong sect — a spiritual movement that was persecuted and banned by the Chinese government in the late 1990s. The paper's connection to the Falun Gong has been widely reported in mainstream publications, including CBC News.

When Trump ran for president, the paper saw that for "the first time in decades a major party's presidential nominee was running an overtly protectionist campaign, with China in his crosshairs."

He wrote the "Falun Gong came to see Trump as a kind of killer angel, summoned from heaven to smite the Chinese government."

The article goes on to say "The Epoch Times ramped up its spending on Facebook ads and hitched its wagon to the 45th president."

That hitch has also proven lucrative. Van Zuylen-Wood said the paper's revenues have quadrupled in the last four years.

The paper also has a large online presence. A recent NBC News report said the Epoch Times now has one of the biggest social media followings of any news outlet.

Van Zuylen-Wood says the paper has become one the "leading purveyors of content suggesting that the American election was stolen."

He noted it also prints recipes, lifestyle stories and wellness tips.

"So it's a strange mix of pedestrian and often kind of irrelevant news and then sort of hard right, often sort of conspiratorially laced content," he said.

'Utter nonsense' concerns resident

That mix is what worries Lesley Burgess about the paper she found in her St. John's mailbox recently. She is among those who have voiced their concerns on social media about the paper and its content.

"It has all these kinds of health and lifestyle stories woven in with all of this misinformation, basically," said Burgess.

She said she had heard about the paper before but it wasn't until she looked through that she realized there was "utter nonsense" everywhere.

CBC's request for comment from the Epoch Times has gone unanswered.

"If you don't know any better, you might think this is a run-of-the-mill paper. And I think that's really dangerous," Burgess said.

Adam Walsh/CBC
Adam Walsh/CBC

Kurt Phillips, a board member with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, has been following the subscription drive of the Epoch Times.

He said the paper's content is of concern because it keeps disseminating disinformation about conspiracy theories on the far right such as "Spygate" and QAnon.

Phillips said he's seeing stories from the paper shared in some mainstream conservative circles, which has the potential to radicalize people with misinformation.

"It is contributing to an ever-growing divide between reality and a fictionalized version of the world that is especially dehumanizing and dangerous," he said.

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