The Media is the Message > Project Veritas Wins Against NYT; BBC's Anti-Semitism Confirmed? CBC Reporter Burns Her Bridges

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Project Veritas wins lawsuit against New York Times

A judge has directed the New York Times to return internal documents belonging to Project Veritas that were cited by the paper in an article last month. The report had sparked allegations that the FBI was behind the memos’ leak.

FILE PHOTO: The New York Times building is seen in Manhattan, New York, US. August 3, 2020.

© Reuters / Shannon Stapleton

In his ruling on Friday, Justice Charles Wood of the Westchester County Supreme Court in New York state ordered the New York Times to give Project Veritas back any physical copies of legal memos prepared by the media watchdog group’s attorneys and to erase all electronic copies.

The judge also upheld his temporary order issued last month against further publication of details from the memos. He said that the documents did not constitute a matter of public concern, adding that they fell under the group’s expectations of privacy that outweighed concerns about press freedoms.

“Steadfast fidelity to, and vigilance in protecting First Amendment freedoms cannot be permitted to abrogate the fundamental protections of attorney-client privilege or the basic right to privacy,” Wood ruled.

Project Veritas had raised objections to a November 11 New York Times article that purportedly revealed how the group held discussions with its lawyers to “gauge how far its deceptive reporting practices can go before running afoul of federal laws.

The article’s timing prompted outrage and suspicions that an FBI source might have leaked the newspaper confidential data obtained during recent raids.

It came out in less than a week after an FBI raid of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s home – as part of an investigation into the group’s acquisition of a diary supposedly belonging to Ashley Biden, the US president’s daughter.

In a statement, Libby Locke, a lawyer for Project Veritas, said that the ruling affirmed the view that the New York Time’s behavior had been “irregular.”

The New York Times has long forgotten the meaning of the journalism it claims to espouse, and has instead become a vehicle for the prosecution of a partisan political agenda.

The decision came as part of a defamation lawsuit Project Veritas filed against the New York Times in 2020 when the paper published an article accusing the group of engaging in “deceptive” journalistic practices. The judge said that while these practices may be of public interest, legal communications were not.

Meanwhile, New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger said the paper would appeal the ruling – claiming that it was without “apparent precedent” and maintained that the documents were “obtained legally in the ordinary course of reporting.”

BBC accused of ‘deep-seated’ biases against Jews

Jewish leaders are demanding an apology over the broadcaster’s coverage

of anti-Semitic abuse

© REUTERS / Luke MacGregor

The BBC has been accused of making a “colossal error” in its report on a November attack against Jewish teenagers on a bus in London and is being called on to apologize.

The public broadcaster was one of many outlets covering the November 29 Oxford Street attack against a group of Jewish teens who were sitting in a bus when a group of men started spitting at them from outside. The group made Nazi salutes and hurled threatening abuse at the teenagers.

A BBC London correspondent, while describing the attack, mentioned that “some racial slurs about Muslim people” could be heard from inside the bus, saying it wasn’t clear if that had played a role in the incident.

According to an independent report commissioned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, however, the anti-Muslim “slur” the BBC journalist was referring to, was actually a call for help in Hebrew by a Jewish man in the bus, translated as “Call someone, it’s urgent.”

A separate forensic analysis of the footage and forensic linguistic analysis ordered by the organization also confirmed that there was no slur, the organization said in a press release published on Thursday.

The results prompted the Board to make an official complaint to the BBC, calling the report an example of “deeply irresponsible journalism.” The organization’s president, Marie van der Zyl, called the BBC’s recollection of events a “colossal error” that it should publicly apologize for “at the very least.”

Van der Zyl questioned the BBC’s impartiality and said the story raised “serious questions about deep-seated biases within the BBC towards Israelis, and towards Jews in general.”

She said this and other “ongoing concerns” would be raised with the corporation’s Director-General Tim Davie in the new year.

The BBC, however, said it is standing by its report of the incident.

“There was a brief reference to a slur, captured in a video recording, that appeared to come from the bus,” a BBC spokesman said, as quoted by British media. He said the reference was included “so the fullest account of the incident was reported.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism also raised concerns over the report, writing to the BBC to “demand explanations” over what it called the “outrageous” coverage of the incident. The group said police investigating the attack “have found no evidence” of the supposed slur from the victims.

The controversy comes after the BBC was ranked third on the infamous Global Anti-Semitism Top Ten list by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the US — after Iran and armed Palestinian group Hamas.

Top reporter explains quitting the ‘woke’ national broadcasting corporation

“To work at the CBC is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon

 journalistic integrity,” Tara Henley wrote

FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, seen in Edmonton, Canada,

 August 9, 2021 © Getty Images / Artur Widak

Journalist and author Tara Henley penned a scathing resignation letter to the Canadian state-funded CBC, accusing it of peddling social justice dogma, shutting down debate, and racially profiling guests in the name of equity.

Henley, whose work has also appeared in multiple US and UK outlets, resigned from the news network this week after nearly a decade. In a resignation letter of sorts published on her new Substack blog and by the conservative-leaning National Post, she said that in the years since she started at the CBC, it “went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press.”

Henley, who describes herself as left-wing, claimed that the CBC’s management have wholly embraced “a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States,” forbidding any questioning of “woke” orthodoxy. 

This agenda extends to selecting which guests appear on the CBC’s shows, Henley claimed. According to her letter, reporters booking guests have to fill out “racial profile forms” to ensure they’re booking “more people of some races and less of others.”

In selecting which topics to cover, Henley said CBC management have no interest in hosting genuine debate on “sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures,” instead prioritizing reporting on “microaggressions” and “ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like.”

Henley said she has for months been receiving complaints from readers and viewers about the editorial direction of the network.

“People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported,” she wrote. “Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as ‘brainstorm’ and ‘lame.’”

CBC is Canada's national broadcaster and is almost completely funded by taxpayers. The Liberal government is much more generous to the CBC than previous Conservative governments. In 2015, the then CBC News frontman, Peter Mansbridge, was so happy when the results of the federal election started coming in showing a Liberal sweep of the Maritime Provinces, that he was literally spitting.

Both examples are real, with the CBC publishing multiple articles and videos this year on the lack of terms for “non-binary” in the Filipino Tagalog language, and describing the terms ‘brainstorm’ and ‘lame,’ as well as ‘blacklist’ and ‘savage,’ as “Words and phrases you may want to think twice about using.”

Henley’s gripes with the CBC aren’t unique, and she is far from the first to lambaste the “woke” mainstream media in recent years. However, she joins a growing number of mainstream journalists leaving the outlets that made them famous and pursuing editorial freedom on platforms like Substack. Former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss and The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald have migrated to Substack in the last year or so, with both accusing their former employers of ideological censorship, and even Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias – an avowed liberal – soon followed suit.

However, another former CBC reporter took to Twitter on Monday to argue the exact opposite to Henley. Ahmar Khan, who left the network in December 2020 after a dispute in which he called ice hockey pundit Don Cherry “xenophobic,” claimed that CBC management “have no idea what poor people, what black people really go through,” complaining that they rejected a race-focused story he pitched them. Referring to Henley’s move to Substack, Khan tweeted that “writing (badly) and shouting about wokeness is the new grift.”

And, yet, Khan is exactly the type of "journalist" Henley is complaining about. Someone who thinks the news media is there for them to use to alter society to their standards. There are programs where such things can be addressed, and should be addressed, but they should be  identified as such, not as the nightly news.

Personally, I watched CBC News for decades, but, a few months ago I stopped watching them altogether as they are a constant source of left wing, Liberal, propaganda, while completely ignoring, or vilifying anything right wing or even centrist. In 6 years, I have never heard a CBC reporter criticize Liberal PM Justin Trudeau, easily the worst Prime Minister in Canada since his father.

Rand Paul quits YouTube over ‘despicable’ censorship

Citing the platform’s rampant censorship practices, the lawmaker said

he was leaving YouTube as part of an ‘exodus’ from Big Tech

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) speaks during a hearing on Covid-19 policy in Washington, DC.

July 20, 2021. © Getty Images / Stefani Reynolds

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has announced that he will no longer be posting content on YouTube, branding the Google-owned platform as the “worst censors” among a host of “Big Tech gatekeepers” that “silenced” opposing views.

Penning his thoughts in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner on Monday, Paul noted that the move would be part of a bigger “exodus” from the “new town square” of “Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram” over rampant censorship and an “almost religious adherence to the edicts of government bureaucrats.”

i.e. Deep State!

“Just because private censorship of speech is allowable under the law, that doesn’t make that censorship any less despicable or illiberal,” Paul wrote, adding that he would be posting video content on rumble.com, an alternative platform that has gained popularity with creators dissatisfied with Big Tech companies’ misinformation policies.

Last year, the outspoken lawmaker received two strikes on his YouTube channel, leading to temporary account suspensions in August and September, for what the platform alleged were violations of its policy regarding Covid-19 misinformation. But Paul countered that the company had “the gall to delete constitutionally protected speech” by taking down his videos challenging prevailing narratives.

It is indeed ironic that the censors likely think of themselves as progressive but their actions are more suggestive of the diktats of the Medieval church.

“In the US in 2021, you are being told there are ideas or opinions that are too ‘dangerous’ for you to see,” Paul said, taking aim at “loud voices” in Congress “on the Left and the Right” who say they want to “break up or regulate Big Tech” without stepping up and doing something about it.

While describing the departure as his “New Year’s resolution,” Paul said he may still post videos on YouTube in order to “criticize them” or promote the competition. He encouraged “other liberty lovers” to follow suit and take their business elsewhere.

“About half of the public leans right,” he noted, adding that if, instead of “conforming to [Big Tech’s] approved opinions,” they “all took our messaging to outlets of free exchange, we could cripple Big Tech in a heartbeat.”

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The Media is the Message > NYTimes - Reckless, Malicious; CNN - Staffer Admits Propaganda; CNN - Curious Piece on Covid19 Origins

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New York Times used ‘deceptive disinformation’ to smear Project Veritas, acted with ‘reckless disregard’ and ‘malice’, judge rules

20 Mar, 2021 19:09

Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe speaks at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) ©  REUTERS/Octavio Jones

A defamation suit from Project Veritas against the New York Times is moving forward, as a judge has ruled the newspaper posed opinion as fact in their coverage of the conservative news outlet.

A New York Supreme Court judge handed Veritas, known for its undercover and whistleblowing videos, a big “win” this week, allowing a defamation suit against the paper and two reporters to proceed forward. 

In the ruling denying a motion to dismiss the suit, the Times was accused of acting with “actual malice” and “reckless disregard” in multiple articles covering a 2020 video report from Veritas on alleged illegal voting practices taking place in Minnesota. It was not the only voter fraud allegation Veritas covered in 2020, with one video expose actually leading to the arrest of a Texas political consultant on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.

In the Minnesota video, multiple people are seen taking part in or discussing ballot harvesting and linking the act to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota). The report alleged ballots were being paid for and even filled out for voters to favor certain candidates. One ballot harvester featured in the video, Liban Osman, has since claimed footage of him was heavily edited and that he was offered money to connect the alleged fraud to Omar – an allegation Project Veritas denied. 

The five Times articles in question called Veritas’ Minnesota videos deceptive, but Justice Charles Wood determined this was not fact, but rather opinion from reporters Maggie Astor and Tiffany Hsu. 

“The Articles that are the subject of this action called the Video ‘deceptive,’ but the dictionary definitions of ‘disinformation’ and ‘deceptive’ provided by defendants’ counsel certainly apply to Astor’s and Hsu’s failure to note that they injected their opinions in news articles, as they now claim,” he wrote in his decision.

Astor referred to a “long history” of releasing “manipulated or selectively edited footage” on the part of Veritas in an article, while Hsu called the video “deceptive” in coverage. 

Wood said this sort of vague coverage “could be viewed as exposing Veritas to ridicule and harm to its reputation as a media source because the reader may read these news Articles, expecting facts, not opinion, and conclude that Veritas is a partisan zealot group, deceptively editing video, and presenting it as news.”

Lawyers for the Times argued that a reader could determine that specific wording such as “deceptive” is opinion-based and cited other news outlets that used similar language, but Wood said the paper did not meet “their burden to prove that the reporting by Veritas in the Video is deceptive.”

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has celebrated the court victory as a “win” for his news outlet and promised that Astor and even New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet will now be put under oath “where they will be forced to answer our questions.”

“Project Veritas will record these depositions and expose them for the world to see,” he said. 

CNN airs Trump CDC chief’s ‘opinion’ that Covid started as Wuhan Lab Leak,

argues he ‘sees & knows things the rest of us don’t’

26 Mar, 2021 15:19

FILE PHOTO. Donald Trump gives the podium to Robert Redfield. ©REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

Trump-favored theory of the origin of Covid-19 pandemic as a lab leak in Wuhan seems to have been endorsed by CNN, which gave air to the former US president’s CDC director to make a case for his ‘opinion’.

The interview with Robert Redfield, who served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Donald Trump, was aired by CNN as part of a preview of an upcoming feature program called “COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out.” In a one-on-one segment with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, Redfield offered the latest reiteration of the claim that the outbreak of Covid-19 in China in late 2019 started as a leak from a virology lab.

“Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out,” he said of the theory, adding that he didn’t imply “intentionality” – i.e., that a Chinese lab released the pathogen on purpose.

He explained his position: “It’s my opinion. But I am a virologist, I spent my time in virology. I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human… [and] became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission.”

He suggested researchers in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel virus was first identified, could be working on making it “grow better and better and better” before it accidentally infected a worker, a scenario that Redfield called “not unusual for respiratory pathogens”.

The accidental lab leak theory was strongly advocated by members of the Trump administration, most notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump’s White House accused China and the World Health Organization (WHO) of covering things up and leaving the world unprepared to deal with the pandemic.

Beijing dismissed the allegations and said Washington was simply trying to shift the blame for its disastrous Covid-19 response to China, which, on the contrary, successfully kept the disease under control.

A WHO fact-finding mission that went to Wuhan to gather new evidence about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus called the lab-leak scenario “extremely unlikely” and said the jump from bats to humans had probably happened through an intermediary animal. A full report on the team’s findings is expected soon.

CNN staff seemed to be accepting Redfield’s words without reservations. A panel discussion after the fragments of the interview were aired concurred that a CDC head “sees things and knows things that the rest of us don’t see”.

“He is talking to people on the ground, not just his counterparts in the China CDC. But we have investigators on the ground in various countries around the world, including China,” Gupta posited, adding that he was referring to “intelligence gathering”.

The news network is known for its reverence of the US intelligence community, including former members, some of whom found employment at CNN. The channel usually takes intelligence assessments and opinions on face value, never asking for underlying evidence – which ostensibly can never be revealed to protect “sources and methods”.

Extending the same blanket of blind trust to a former health official, who allegedly “muzzled” his own agency to conform to the wishes of the administration he served, is not as common in the US mainstream media.

So, what is with CNN? Are they moving to the right, or are they attempting to actually debate two sides of an argument instead of just one side? They are in danger of lending some credibility to Trumpians. What would cause them to do that?

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This story is not news to any conservative; it's been obvious for a long time. It should be news to liberals, or Democrats, but if it isn't it says something very disturbing about them - the end justifies the means!

CNN staffer boasts to Project Veritas that network

peddled anti-Trump ‘propaganda’

By Mark Moore, NY Post

April 13, 2021 | 5:53pm 

Charlie Chester, a technical Director at CNN, claims "if it wasn't for CNN, I don't know that Trump would have got voted out," during a series of fake Tinder dates filmed by Project Veritas.Getty Images; Project Veritas (inset)

A CNN staffer admitted in a secretly recorded video that his network produced “propaganda” to oust former President Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election — and bragged about their success.

Charlie Chester, a technical Director at the cable network, was filmed by Project Veritas during a series of fake Tinder dates as he explained how they “got Trump out” of office.

“Look what we did, we [CNN] got Trump out. I am 100​ percent going to say it, and I 100​ percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out,” Chester said, adding that he came to work at CNN because he ​​”wanted to be a part of that.”

“Our focus was to get Trump out of office, right? Without saying it, that’s what it was.”

Chester explained how they overdramatized Trump health issues by bringing in medical experts.

“[Trump’s] hand was shaking or whatever, I think. We brought in so many medical people to all tell a story that was all speculation – that he was neurologically damaged, and he was losing it. He’s unfit to – you know – whatever. We were creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about. I think that’s propaganda,” he said.

Asked by the ​sleuth if he and CNN were concerned with Joe Biden’s health during the election, Chester said the network had that in mind.​

“Showing him jogging is obviously deflection of his age and they’re [CNN] trying to make it like, ‘Oh, I’m healthy,'” Chester said.

The date asked: “What do you mean?”​

Charlie Chester, a technical Director at CNN says the network was “creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about,” in regards to former President Donald Trump’s health issues.

AFP via Getty Images  video 8:59

“We would always show shots of him [Biden] jogging and that [he’s] healthy, you know, and him in aviator shades. Like you paint him as a young geriatric​,” Chester replied.

A source close to CNN said Project Veritas targeted Chester through the dating app Tinder because his profile mentioned he worked at CNN, according to Mediaite.

The Project Veritas employee, who was not identified and claimed to be a nurse, went on five dates wearing a wire, including the final one at a coffee shop in Chester’s neighborhood. It’s unclear when the dates took place.

Chester told his “date” he would be fine with it if Biden died, because he thought Vice President Kamala Harris is “f—ing real.”

“I had so many arguments about, like — my dad would be like, ‘You’re, you know, you’re voting in Kamala Harris because he’s going to die in the presidency,” Chester told the woman. “And I’m like, ‘He’s not going to f—ing die.’ But I’m OK with that. I’m OK with that. She probably could be a b—h in, like, a board meeting, and you’d hate her as a boss, but she’s f—ing real, and better than what we got regardless.”

Chester was asked if CNN covered Biden tripping as he walked up the stairs.

Charlie Chester, a technical Director at CNN, says he’s OK with President Joe Biden dying because Vice President Kamala Harris is “f—ing real.” Project Veritas

“But you talk about that briefly. You don’t make that a huge story,” he said.

CNN did not respond to requests for comment by The Post.

Biden was criticized during the late summer and early fall of 2020 for limiting public appearances as part of his safety precautions for the coronavirus pandemic.

He consulted with his campaign officials and participated in interviews from a studio he had constructed in the basement of his Wilmington, Del., home.

During one of the meetings with his “date,” Chester talked about how CNN also targeted anti-Trump voters by focusing on climate change, adding “fear sells.”

“I think there’s a COVID fatigue. So, like whenever a new story comes up, they’re [CNN’s] going to latch onto it. They’ve already announced in our office that once the public is — will be open to it — we’re going to start focusing mainly on climate,” Chester said.

“It’s going to be our [CNN’s] focus. Like our focus was to get Trump out of office, right? Without saying it, that’s what it was, right? So our next thing is going to be climate change awareness​,” he added.

​”What’s that look like?” Chester was asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. I have a feeling that it’s going to be like, constantly showing videos of decline in ice, and weather warming up, and like the effects it’s having on the economy​,” Chester said.

​Asked who makes that decision, he said the “head of the network,” referring to Jeff Zucker.

“I imagine that he’s got his council and they’ve all like, discussed, like where they think​,​”​ he said​, trailing off.

He then said the new focus would be on a ​​”p​andemic-like story that we’ll beat to death, but that one’s got longevity.​”

“​Like there’s a definitive ending to the pandemic. It’ll taper off to a point that it’s not a problem anymore. Climate change can take years, so they’ll [CNN will] probably be able to milk that quite a bit,” he said.​

What we need is a definite ending to CNN! Whether CNN's propaganda was obvious to Americans or not, it was definitely obvious to conservative Canadians because of its similarity to our national broadcaster - CBC.

The Media is the Message - Hong Kong Media Mogul Arrested Again; MSM Paid to Print Chinese Propaganda

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Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai ordered back into custody

days after release on bail

By Elizabeth Shim

Hong Kong media tycoon and founder of Apple Daily Jimmy Lai (C) is being ordered back to prison after being released on $1.29 million bail. File Photo by Jerome Favre/EPA-EFE

Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Hong Kong dissident and media mogul Jimmy Lai has been ordered back to prison more than a week after he was freed on bail.

Lai, 73, a critic of China's increasing grip on Hong Kong, had been charged under the new Hong Kong national security law for his support of pro-democracy movements.

Lai was released on $1.29 million bail before Christmas, but was ordered back to jail Thursday after Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal ruled in favor of the prosecution.

Lai, publisher of local tabloid Apple Daily, is appealing the court decision. His hearing is scheduled Feb. 1.

The Hong Kong businessman also faces charges of breaching office land-lease terms. Senior executives at Next Digital, founded by Lai in 1981, also face the charges.

Lai resigned from the company Tuesday, when he said he wanted to "spend more on dealing with his personal affairs," according to Hong Kong Free Press.

Thursday's court decision came from Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, Justice Roberto Ribeiro and Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam selected the judges, according to the report.

Lai's bail drew a response from Beijing earlier in the week. Chinese state media, including People's Daily, condemned the decision as "inconceivable" and described Lai as "notorious and extremely dangerous."

And, of course, courts in China are extremely political.

Lai has been charged with colluding with foreign powers, and encouraging countries like the United States to place sanctions on Chinese Communist Party officials for passing the Hong Kong security law.

Prosecutors who sought the reversal of Lai's bail Thursday cited Article 42 of the security law, which specifies, "no bail shall be granted to a criminal suspect or defendant unless the judge has sufficient grounds for believing that the individual will not continue to commit acts endangering national security."

Analysts including political scientist Joseph Cheng told Al Jazeera the "whole process" is a threat to the independence of the Hong Kong judiciary.

"Jimmy Lai was initially denied bail, then he appealed and was granted bail by the high court -- at this juncture, the pro-Beijing media in Hong Kong ... severely attacked the judge's decision," Cheng said.

And consequently, it was reversed. Third-world justice system!

China: Paying US Media to Publish Propaganda

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'Borrowing a Boat to Go Out on the Ocean'

by Judith Bergman

January 2, 2021 at 5:00 am

The Chinese government-controlled English language newspaper, China Daily, in 2020 paid a variety of US media outlets nearly $2 million for publishing propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a disclosure that China Daily filed in late November with the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), according to Daily Caller.

China Daily has reportedly been registered as a foreign agent under FARA since 1983, which means it is required to report its activities and financial transactions to the Justice Department.

In June, China Daily filed a disclosure with the Justice Department showing that, since November 2016, it had paid $19 million to U.S. media outlets, including $12 million to newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times. Other newspapers included the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Houston Chronicle and Foreign Policy.

China Daily's ads come in the form of advertising supplements, inserts called "China Watch," in a strategy known as "borrowing a boat to go out on the ocean." According to Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst for East Asia, Freedom House, in 2017 testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission:

"This phrase refers to disseminating Chinese state-media content via the pages, frequencies, or screen-time of privately owned media outlets that have developed their own local audiences... In recent years, its robust expansion to English-language media has garnered much attention and public debate. One of the most prominent examples has been the emergence of China Watch — a paid insert sponsored by the state-run China Daily — that has appeared both in print and online in prominent U.S. papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal."

According to The Guardian, Australia: It was an eight-page Communist party newspaper each month in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Australian Financial Review.

This form of advertising is sometimes also known as advertorials, or native advertising: the stories are camouflaged to look like the other news content of the media outlets in which they appear.

The Wall Street Journal's "China Watch" website, for example, has published a number of articles promoting China's handling of the pandemic, including articles with titles such as, "Apple CEO: China Getting Outbreak Under Control", "US Sister Cities Get Help From Chinese Friends in Virus Fight", "WHO Chief Highlights China-Africa Cooperation on COVID-19 Fight", and a number of articles criticizing the US for its questioning of China's handling of the pandemic, such as "Washington's Wuhan Travel Claim Rebutted" and "Trump's China Remark Rebuked".

China is not the only foreign government paying to advertise its national propaganda in the US. In 2007, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian government newspaper, began to publish its advertorials, "Russia Beyond the Headlines," in The Washington Post, although the ads reportedly disappeared from the newspaper in 2015. In the past, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reportedly also published Russia Beyond the Headlines supplements in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

"China needs to strengthen media coverage...and use innovative outreach methods...to tell a good Chinese story and promote China's views internationally", Xi Jinping said at the National Meeting on Propaganda and Thought Work in August 2013. Since then, he has regularly repeated this message. "To present good images," Xi told an August 2018 National Meeting on Ideology and Propaganda, "we should improve our international communication capability, tell China's stories well, disseminate China's voice, show an authentic and comprehensive China to the world, and raise the country's soft power and the influence of Chinese culture".

As pointed out by James Fallows in The Atlantic back in 2010, when The Washington Post was already publishing China Watch, it is one thing when such a supplement is clearly labeled as a paid advertisement, but quite different when such ads are published online and made to look similar to the outlet's other news articles, that only "the tiny words 'A Paid Supplement to the Washington Post' in the upper right hand corner distinguish them from the rest of the content".

This is a disgrace to China that they have to pay media to tell their stories. It is even more of a disgrace to mainstream media that they are willing to dupe their readers and lead them astray. There is no integrity there whatsoever. Publishers, like lawyers, know that readers don't read very fine print. 

Mainstream media's credibility is falling at an astonishing rate. It's not because reporters are liars, though some are more political than truthful. It's the editor, publishers, and owners who determine what stories to investigate, what to publish, what spin to put on them. Can you imagine the NYT, WAPO, or the Globe doing a very serious story on China when they are making a killing on China Watch? It would never get to the investigation stage.

It's disturbing that MSM publishers couldn't care less that their readers read the truth. It's like Big Pharma couldn't care less if their customer's health improves, they are only interested in our money. That's why Big Pharma will fight tooth and nail to keep Ivermectin out of the news and social media. Ivermectin is off-patent and is very inexpensive to make. It is arguably as good as, or better than the Covid19 vaccines on the market, but Big Pharma will keep it off the market (3rd story on link) and unapproved by Health ministries as long as possible, regardless of how many die.

"Those who engage in this form of propaganda hope to exploit the higher credibility of the hosting media site to enhance the persuasiveness of their message", wrote researchers Yaoyao Dai and Luwei Luqiu, who did an online survey on the effect of China Daily's ads on American and British readers of The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph. Their findings showed that readers actually struggled "to distinguish political advertisements from standard news stories regardless of their level of education and media literacy".

China does not lack for English language media giants of its own to disseminate the Chinese Communist Party narrative about China across the world. According to Professor Anne-Marie Brady, a fellow at the Wilson Center:

"In early 2009, Beijing announced that it would invest ¥45 billion (roughly US$7.25 billion) into its main media outlets in order to strengthen its international news coverage and global presence. As part of this campaign, known as 'big propaganda' (da waixuan), Xinhua News Service increased its number of overseas bureaus from 100 to 186. That same year, the Global Times (a popular tabloid with an international focus owned by People's Daily) launched an English-language edition. CCTV International also began broadcasting in Arabic and Russian, and in 2010 rebranded itself as CCTV News. China's massive investment in these media attracted considerable international interest and debate".

In a December 2018 report, "Assessment on US Defense Implications of China's Expanding Global Access," the Pentagon assessed China's media expansion:

"Xinhua News Agency, China's official state-run news agency, launched 40 new foreign bureaus and doubled the number of overseas correspondents between 2009 and 2011. Xinhua counted 162 total foreign bureaus in 2017 and aims to have 200 by 2020. China's expanding official media presence reflects a concerted effort on the part of its leadership to shape opinions about the country and promote China's view on key topics. President Xi Jinping urged China Global Television Network, Xinhua's international media service, to 'tell the China story well' and "spread China's voice... a 2015 Reuters report revealed that China Radio International (CRI), a Chinese state-owned entity, was using subsidiaries to mask its control over 33 radio stations in 14 countries, including the United States. These radio stations broadcast pro-China content but have not registered as agents of a foreign government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)".

The reason China did not rely solely on its own state media, according to Brady, was because the strategy of using state media was "widely regarded by Chinese mass-communication experts as a failure. If foreign audiences know that a piece of information comes from an official Chinese media source, they are likely to interpret it as 'propaganda' rather than 'news.'"

With "social justice" having become something of a mantra across the Western mainstream media landscape, the promotion of Chinese regime propaganda to unsuspecting Americans constitutes an oddly incongruent and unethical business practice that the media industry does not appear to have reflected upon publicly, if at all. While several newspapers no longer engage in the practice – The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and New York Times among them – the practice does not seem to have caused any sort of actual uproar in those media circles that engage in it, such as the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, the UK-based Financial Times, Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times. This reticence is odd, not so much because those newspapers want and need revenues, which is understandable, but because so many journalists and editors consider themselves as standing up against racism, ethnic and religious discrimination, and human rights abuses. Taking money from the Chinese Communist regime in exchange for spreading its propaganda would seem to indicate that this stance is simply empty posturing.

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

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