The Epoch Times - Assessments

Assessments

James Bettinger, a professor of Communications at Stanford University and the director of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships, said "Even if the Epoch Times is not associated with Falun Gong, if they consistently write about Falun Gong in the same perspective, or if there are no articles examining Falun Gong, people would perceive it as being not credible."

In 2010, The Epoch Times had to defend its reporting in the Canadian court system, when a publisher they had reported on, Crescent Chau, sued for libel. The justice in charge of the case ruled that the paper had acted in the public interest, and that the particular article expressed "legitimate concerns and constitute an opinion which is drawn from a factual premise". In examining the case, John Gordon Miller, a Canadian journalist and media professor, noted that the articles of the paper "appear to be thoroughly and professionally reported, which isn't always the case in the often under-resourced ethnocultural press." Miller viewed the court victory as significant step in repairing its credibility, previously damaged by the Wang Wenyi incident. "In the Quebec case, the paper's reporting stood up to the court's scrutiny," Miller wrote.

Orville Schell, dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, said in 2005 that "It's hard to vouch for their quality because it's difficult to corroborate, but it's not something to be dismissed as pure propaganda."

The paper's stance has been lauded by some Chinese political commentators. Jiao Guobiao, a former Beijing University journalism professor who was dismissed after criticizing the Central Propaganda Department, proposed that even if Falun Gong outlets published only negative information highly critical of the CCP, the weight of their attacks could never begin to counterbalance the positive propaganda the party publishes about itself. In addressing media balance, Jiao noted that the Chinese public lacked negative, critical information regarding their country. As such, he noted for a need of media balance based on the principles of freedom, equality, and legality, and that media balance "is the result of the collective imbalances of all"