Facebook has blacklisted ads from the Epoch Times, a global multi-language newspaper known for its critical coverage of the communist regime in China.
In contrast to many other mainstream newspapers operating in the United States, the Epoch Times has not adopted a rabidly anti-Trump stance. It has also been subject to numerous hitpieces from the mainstream media, notably NBC News.
In a statement, the newspaper’s publisher, Stephen Gregory, blamed “inaccuracies, blatant errors, and misrepresentations” from NBC News for the Facebook ban, which covers ads for the newspaper’s print subscriptions.
In a comment to Breitbart News, Gregory confirmed that the ban occurred two days after NBC News published one of its hatchet jobs about the paper.
“I don’t think we have to look very far to understand why NBC News and MSNBC published such hostile, dishonest pieces attacking the Epoch Times,” added Gregory. “Harvard’s Shorenstein Center surveyed media coverage of the first 100 days of the Trump administration and found that NBC News coverage was 93 percent negative, tied with CNN for the most negative. It’s clear that NBC doesn’t want to tolerate those that report differently.”
“The Epoch Times has reported factually and honestly on the Trump administration and has been one of the leading news outlets in unraveling Spygate—the actions taken by Obama-era officials against the Trump campaign and his presidency. Our reporting on Spygate contradicted two years of false reporting by NBC in which it claimed the Trump administration had colluded with Russia to try to rig the 2016 election.”
He also said that despite repeated requests for clarification, Facebook has not provided any explanation other than “a generic explanation that we had violated policy, without explaining what policy they meant.”
Notably, the ban came despite the fact that the Epoch Times has previously spent over $2 million dollars on Facebook ads without issue.
Founded by Chinese-Americans associated with the Falun Gong, a persecuted religious minority in China, the paper has enjoyed significant growth in recent years.
As NBC News itself admitted in one of its hitpieces against the newspaper, “videos from the Epoch Media Group … combined for around 3 billion views on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, ranking 11th among all video creators across platforms and outranking every other traditional news publisher.”
Are you an insider at Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.