Ever since the arrival of online news sources, American print outlets have struggled to remain relevant and financially solvent. One revenue source is the Chinese communist dictatorship paying millions of dollars to such U.S. newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal with advertisement sections titled China Daily prepared to pass as actual news stories.
Yuichiro Kakutani, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon, alleges the Chinese regime “routinely broke federal law by not disclosing how much it spent to publish regime propaganda” through China Daily.
While foreign agents may place ads in the United States, the propaganda outlet has repeatedly violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) by failing to provide full disclosures about its purchases.
China Daily has published propaganda in mainstream outlets for decades, but did not disclose its purchases of space in American newspapers to the Department of Justice until 2012. Even after it began acknowledging its relationship with the papers, the regime mouthpiece continued to violate federal disclosure requirements. China Daily has failed to provide breakdowns of spending activities and withheld copies of online ads, among other omissions that violate federal law, according to experts who reviewed years of its FARA filings.
While foreign agents may place ads in the United States, the propaganda outlet has repeatedly violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) by failing to provide full disclosures about its purchases.
A spokesman for the Washington Post told the Free Beacon that the newspaper has run China Daily ads for "more than 30 years."
The Chinese publication “has run more than 700 online ads designed to look like news articles and purchased 500 print pages in six American newspapers over the last seven years,” Kakutani reported.
“These propaganda articles frame state oppression in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong in a positive light and run alongside actual news stories produced by reporters at the Post, Times, Wall Street Journal and other outlets.”
Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, chareged that American newspapers have “traded credibility for ad revenue.”
"These outlets claim to support democracy, but they've participated in a cover-up for an ongoing communist-run genocide,” Banks said. Democracy died in darkness, but it pays well.
Federal law requires foreign agents to report and provide copies of all propaganda that is “disseminated or circulated among two or more persons,” stated Ben Freeman, director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy. “Clearly, an ad that's in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or any big media outlet is going to be distributed to two or more people.”
China Daily is “flush with money… including $11.8 million that the paper's Beijing office wired to the U.S. branch over the past year,” Kakutani noted.
Of course, a Post spokesperson defended the ads, arguing that the newspaper gives “wide latitude” to advertisers as long as the ads don’t break any laws.
Also, a Times spokeswoman claimed that her newspaper “covers China thoroughly and aggressively, and at no time has advertising influenced our coverage.”
