New Report Analyzes New York Times Coverage of Falun Gong

Detailed study analyzed language, focus, and sources from New York Times articles between 1999 and 2023

NEW YORK, NY, USA, April 16, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- According to a new report published by the Falun Dafa Information Center, The New York Times often used language from the Chinese regime's state-run media to describe Falun Gong. Additionally, in the past 12 years, the Times has not published an article focused on the persecution of Falun Gong in China. During the same time period, details of persecution of Falun Gong in China were included in the annual reports of the U.S. State Department as well as special reports from Freedom House, and other human rights organizations.

The report also found that over the last six years, the Times reporting on Falun Gong has been exclusively focused on the Falun Gong diaspora and affiliated organizations, particularly in the United States.

The detailed study analyzed 159 New York Times articles dating back to 1999, and compared the results with aggregates of news articles focused on other persecuted minorities in China.

“Like many Americans, the New York Times was a staple of our household growing up. For 25 years, however, its reporting on Falun Gong has been disappointing. The image of Falun Gong that emerges from these articles is at complete odds with the lived reality of practitioners and evaluations of experts on Chinese religion,” says Levi Browde, the executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center.

The paper’s curious approach to Falun Gong began almost immediately after the spiritual practice was banned in China, with 76 percent of news articles from 1999 to 2002 carrying inaccurate and negative descriptions of Falun Gong, while parroting Chinese state-run media with claims to have “crushed” Falun Gong in China. By contrast, during this time, other major papers like the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal produced ground-breaking investigations and Pulitzer-prize-winning journalism about the human toll the crackdown was taking.

“With this research," says Browde, "we hoped to better understand these problems, and hopefully lead to some soul-searching at the Times as to what went wrong and how to fix it."

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE: https://faluninfo.net/new-york-times-falun-gong-distortion/

To interview the report authors or request a private briefing, email contact@faluninfo.net.

Levi Browde
Falun Dafa Information Center
+1 845-418-4870
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