DENVER — The billboard is remarkably simple. Next to a photo of an unidentified man, on a canary yellow background, the tagline reads “#1 Trusted News.” Below, a url encourages people to visit the website for the Epoch Times.

Despite its claims, the Epoch Times is not the most-trusted news outlet by any official measure. The outlet has a mysterious ownership structure, has elevated conspiracy theories and employed suspicious marketing strategies that saw them banned from advertising on Facebook.

The outlet's sophisticated appearance, both in print and online, obscures the partisan slant of its shadowy operation.

“I think that just makes it much harder for most people — not just journalists or academics — to distinguish fact from fiction. Or if not fiction, at least exaggeration,” said Priyanjana Bengani, a researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Bengani researches partisan news outlets with a focus on digital media.

This is not the first time the Epoch Times has made Colorado news. In 2019, unsolicited copies of the print edition of the Epoch Times appeared in Routt County mailboxes. Shannon Lukens, a news director for Steamboat Radio, was one of the recipients.

“I don’t want to be associated with any journalism outlet that has a bias or agenda,” Lukens told the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

That same year, journalists spotted copies of the newspaper inside the Colorado State Capitol. The papers were placed on racks reserved for the Denver Post, and the Epoch Times publisher said they did so with permission from both the Denver Post and Capitol building administrators. Denver Post and Capitol officials said that was not true.

John Tang started the Epoch Times in Georgia in 2000 to counter propaganda from the Chinese government and to defend practitioners of Falun Gong, of which Tang is a member.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual movement that Li Hongzhi founded in 1992. The movement combines ancient Chinese meditative exercises with Li’s ultraconservative, conspiratorial views. Li has decried homosexuality as “filthy” and “deviant.” He rejects modern medicine and art, and has said that aliens from other planets “corrupted mankind” by introducing modern technology.

China’s ruling Communist Party banned Falun Gong, calling it an “evil cult” and has persecuted its practitioners.

Li’s views are reflected in the Epoch Times’ articles and videos. The outlet has published reports with headlines such as “The Sinister Theory Behind the Q in LGBTQ” and "How Our Thoughts and Feelings Can Change the Course of Cancer."

According to the New York Times, the Epoch Times “posted anti-vaccine screeds, an article falsely claiming that Bill Gates and other elites are ‘directing’ the Covid-19 pandemic and allegations about a ‘Jewish mob’ that controls the world.”

A former Epoch Times employee, Steve Klett, told NBC News that his articles were edited to remove any outside criticisms of Donald Trump. Other topics were off limits.

“The worst was the Pulse shooting,” Klett said, referring to the 2016 shooting in which a gunman killed 49 people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando.

“We weren’t allowed to cover stories involving homosexuality, but that bumps up against them wanting to cover Islamic terrorism. So I wrote four articles without using the word 'gay,'” he said.

Over the past 24 years, the Epoch Times has grown dramatically, yet very little is known about the outlet’s ownership. The New York Times reports that the Epoch Times “is decentralized and operates as a cluster of regional chapters, each organized as a separate nonprofit. It is also extraordinarily secretive.”

“When you mask [the ownership], and you give the illusion of nonpartisanship or non-biased or trusted — pick the moniker of your choice — it effectively ends up deceiving the reader … as to what your true intentions are,” Bengani said.

There are multiple billboards advertising the Epoch Times in the Denver area. Rocky Mountain PBS found identical billboards at the intersection of Monaco Parkway and Leetsdale Drive, along Brighton Boulevard in RiNo and on I-70 Eastbound near exit 266 in Wheat Ridge.

The three Denver-area billboards belong to OUTFRONT Media. Rocky Mountain PBS reached out to the company, but did not hear back.

People have noticed the same Epoch Times billboards in Cleveland, Portland and Nashville.

Rocky Mountain PBS reached out to the Epoch Times, inquiring about how much money it spends on ads in the Denver market, and the data supporting the claim that the outlet is the “#1 Trusted News.” We did not receive a response.

The photo on the billboard shows Joshua Philipp, host of the show "Crossroads” on EpochTV. The billboard photo is the same headshot Philipp uses on his LinkedIn page, but it has a different background.

Philipp is identified as an “investigative reporter” for the Epoch Times, yet many of his segments, which cover topics such as Apple Vision Pro “rewiring the human brain,” come with a disclaimer: “Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.”

An Epoch Times billboard at the intersection of Monaco and Leetsdale in Denver is identical to other billboards across the country.
Photo: Jeremy Moore, Rocky Mountian PBS

The Epoch Times uses the same “#1 Trusted News” phrase on its website’s “about us” page, and attempts to support the claim with a series of examples.

First, they say that the Epoch Times is “truly independent.”

“The Epoch Times is a totally independent nonprofit orgnization [sic],” they write. “Our mission is inspired by our founders’ personal experiences in communist China and their efforts to bring honest, uncensored news despite oppression and violence.”

Second, they hang their hat on the fact that the outlet was rated as “Center” in a Allsides Blind Bias Survey, in which readers from the public review articles for political bias.

It is true that most readers in 2020 rated the Epoch Times as “Center,” however what the Epoch Times did not include was the fact that Allsides editors, after reviewing reader responses, officially rated the outlet as both “right” and “lean right.” (PBS is not included in the Allsides chart.)

[Related: Poynter: Should you trust media bias charts?]

Ad Fontes, which produces another popular media chart, ranked the Epoch Times as “strong right,” calling the outlet both “unreliable” and “problematic.” (Ad Fontes ranked PBS as “middle.”)

The Epoch Times also points out that it has never “endorsed a political candidate.” This needs more context. While it has not made an official endorsement like the ones you might read in the New York Times editorial section, the Epoch Times spent millions of dollars in advertisements backing Donald Trump. In 2019, NBC News reported that the Epoch Times spent $1.5 million on 11,000 Facebook ads over the course of six months.

“All of the ads are very pro-Trump, but they also push a conspiratorial message,” said reporter Brandy Zadrozny, who covers misinformation and extremism.

The advertising dramatically increased the Epoch Times’ readership and revenue, but it came at a cost. Facebook found that the Epoch Times “leveraged foreign actors posing as Americans to push political content” and banned the outlet from future advertising.

Unofficial Facebook accounts with generic names continued pushing ads with Epoch Times content.

“I remember they were running ads under the banner of ‘Pure American Journalism’ or ‘Honest Paper,’” Bengani said. “How do you expect a regular user of any social media platform to discern that they’re actually all the same entity? Is it asking too much of them to actually make that distinction? I think it is.”

Facebook later removed many of the ads from the unofficial accounts for violating the platform’s advertising standards. Representatives from the Epoch Times said they advertised under the new accounts because Facebook intitially did not explain why they blocked the main Epoch Times profile from posting ads.

The Epoch Times wears the Facebook advertising ban like a badge of honor. “In today's world, being targeted by Big Tech and the legacy media often means you're doing the right thing,” the Epoch Times wrote.

Today, the Epoch Times is one of the most popular free news apps in the Apple store, ahead of the Associated Press, NBC News and the BBC. For a time, it was number one. The YouTube channels affiliated with the Epoch Times consistently receive hundreds of thousands — in many cases, millions — of views.

A large amount of the Epoch Times’ funding comes from subscribers. The most recent tax documents available on the IRS website show that in 2021, the Epoch Times brought in more than $76 million from subscriptions, accounting for more than 60% of the organization’s total revenue.

The Epoch Times offers has an online shop, where customers can purchase anti-communist literature and DVDs for a documentary about the “real story” of the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Epoch Times also sells whole bean coffee.

The outlet has strong ties with another organization that is ubiquitous on billboards: Shen Yun.

Falun Gong practitioners in 2006 founded the anti-communist dance troupe, which practices at a compound in upstate New York called Dragon Springs. The compound is the headquarters for Falun Gong and Li Hongzhi reportedly lives there among his followers.

NBC News reports that although Epoch Times representatives deny any official affiliation with Falun Gong, there are “clear financial and organizational ties.”

“The Epoch Times board members and most staff are Falun Gong practitioners. The nonprofits behind The Epoch Times and Friends of Falun Gong, the movement’s advocacy organization, share executives and provide grants and services to each other, according to tax filings,” Zadrozny wrote.

Two former Epoch Times employees told the New York Times they were instructed to write flattering profiles of Shen Yun performers because it would bolster the performers’ visa applications.

The Epoch Times homepage, meanwhile, currently features four main categories: Decision 2024, Judiciary, Israel-Hamas War and Shen Yun.

A screenshot of the Epoch Times homepage taken Feb. 14, 2024, shows a vertical dedicated to Shen Yun, an anti-communist dance troupe founded by Falun Gong practitioners.

Bengani said local news stations should “bear the brunt” of spotting and identifying misinformation, disinformation and partisan media.

“I think it’s important to find a source you trust as opposed to trusting things blindly on the internet,” she said. “Especially if you’ve not heard of an entity — why would you trust them?”

Through its billboard advertisements, the Epoch Times is ensuring people hear about them.

“If you’re seeing that [billboard] as ‘America’s most trusted news source’ or whatever, have you unconsciously or subconsciously registered that, so that when you see an Epoch Times ad, you’re inclined to believe it?” Bengani said. “I don’t have an answer for that.”

Note: Shen Yun has been an underwriter for Rocky Mountain Public Media for several years. Our journalism team follows the Public Media Code of Integrity and our work is free of undue influence from third-party funders, political interests, and other outside forces.

Update (Feb. 26, 2024): This story was updated to reflect Shannon Lukens' job title.

Kyle Cooke is the digital media manager at Rocky Mountain PBS. Kylecooke@rmpbs.org.