before its news
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see epoch times
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/nbc-executive-chris-kitze-became-a-boss-at-epoch-times-pro-trump-outlet
This article was co-published with Responsible Statecraft.
A former NBC executive who founded one of the earliest—and more successful—fake news websites quietly assumed a leadership role at The Epoch Times as the news outlet ramped up its pro-Trump messaging after the 2016 election.
Epoch’s influential role as a Trump-friendly media outlet coincided with access to Trump allies seeking friendly interviews, uncritical coverage of the administration’s policies, and a venue to advance the White House’s militant anti-Beijing and hyper-nationalist messages.
That change in direction—which included a flood of omnipresent YouTube ads costing at least $1 million, and a ban from Facebook for violating the platform’s rules about political advertising—appears to have occurred alongside the 2017 arrival of a new vice president at The Epoch Times, Chris Kitze, and huge jumps in the paper’s revenue from $3.8 million in 2016 to $8.1 million in 2017 and $12.4 million in 2018.
Kitze, who now manages a cryptocurrency hedge fund, was listed as a member of the six-person board of the The Epoch Times Association, the nonprofit that operates The Epoch Times, as a vice president in 2017 and 2018 tax documents. But Kitze’s ties to The Epoch Timesgo back much further than 2017 and point to a mutually beneficial relationship. Since 2010, Kitze’s company, BeforeItsNews.com, an early fake news site that promoted conspiracy theories about then-president Barack Obama and offered extensive coverage of Trump’s insurgent candidacy in 2016, promoted Falun Gong—a spiritual movement that is persecuted by the Chinese government and has the stated goal of destroying the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—and The Epoch Times; meanwhile, Falun Gong-linked media properties quietly promoted Kitze’s other business ventures, including Unseen, an encrypted messaging platform.
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Chris Kitze’s career spans countless internet ventures and well-timed exits from companies across two tech bubbles. HisLinkedIn profile shows an impressive career starting in 1991 with the founding of Acris Media, a company selling clipart on CD-ROMs, a stint as the VP of Marketing at the early search engine Lycos from 1995 to 1996 (“I led the Lycos marketing team through one of the first internet IPOs,” says Kitze on LinkedIn) and founding and serving as chairman of free-website company Xoom.com, leading to a merger with NBC Internet (NBCi).
Kitze served as CEO of NBCi, NBC’s initiative to create an NBC controlled internet portal and landing page, from 1999 to 2000. Kitze’s post-NBC activities include serving as CEO of Yaga, a filesharing network, serving as chairman of Wine.com before pivoting his attention to a number of blockchain- and cryptocurrency-related companies five years ago.
Kitze’s public resume contains at least two noticeable omissions: the 2008 formation of BeforeItsNews.com and Kitze’s appointment as a VP at The Epoch Timesand membership on the paper’s board starting in 2017.
beforeItsNews.comappears to have begun operations in early 2009, shortly after Obama’s inauguration and, at launch, directly attacked the news media’s treatment of Obama, referencing then-MSNBC-pundit Chris Matthew’s March 2008 comment about how “I felt this thrill going up my leg” when Obama spoke.
BeforeItsNews.com’s “about” pageread:
Something strange happened during the 2008 U.S. election. The news media came down with a bad case of amnesia — they forgot exactly what it was they were supposed to be doing. Instead of asking critical questions of those running for office, they went out of their way to "get a tingle up their leg" for some candidates, or to ignore the constitutional requirements of the political office.
We wanted to present a point of view that didn't seem to exist in the mainstream media. One that is hopeful, yet realistic, based on the natural law of truth, compassion and tolerance.
What that meant in practice was the rapid production of enormous quantities of user contributed news articles, wide dissemination on social media, and no editorial oversight or fact-checking.
The website encourages anyone to contribute articles, advertising itself as a “news utility—an internet platform that enables the hosting and distribution of any kind of news, worldwide.
It will get out through all the major search engines,” says the current “about” page.
Conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth certificate, UFOs, the New World Order, and imminent economic and societal collapse all made the front page of BeforeItsNews.com.
A 2017Guardian article guk ]on Facebook’s failures to address the dissemination of fake news on its platform specifically mentioned Kitze and BeforeItsNews.com:
Chris Kitze, who runs BeforeItsNews.com, said that although he allows users to post any content without fact-checking, he hasn’t noticed Facebook tagging any of his site’s articles as fake news. That includes a recent piece debunked by Snopes claiming to include leaked photos showing how Obama practiced Islam in the White House.
“A lot of people think Obama is Muslim. That’s what it plays on. Is it real? I don’t know,” he said. “The fact is a lot of people thought it was real or it reflects their sentiment.”
Alongside publishing a steady flow of factually questionable content, Kitze, BeforeItsNews.com, and Epoch appear to have enjoyed a thriving relationship with over 20,000 Epoch Times articles appearing on the site between 2010 and 2012.
Kitze’s involvement with Falun Gong was detailed in an Epoch Timesarticle publishedin June 2012, in which he described coming across Falun Gong practitioners in New York’s Times Square in 2005 and, remembering that encounter, educating himself in the movement and practicing its meditation techniques two years later.
The group’s persecution in China—the Chinese government banned Falun Gong and prohibits practice of the movement’s exercises in public and the dissemination of its written material—and freedom of participating in an activity defying the Chinese government clearly resonated with Kitze.
*The Epoch Times*explained that Kitze was drawn to Falun Gong’s openness and participants’ voluntary decision to practice and study the movement.
“Kitze said this may be why the Chinese communist regime was so afraid of Falun Gong that it launched a brutal campaign of hate and persecution against some 100 million practitioners, starting a decade ago in the country where the practice originated” said The Epoch Times. “Because it’s in your heart and mind—that’s something no government could ever control, that’s one reason why a totalitarian regime would oppose it,” Kitze told the paper.
Matthew Tullar, who served as director of circulation at The Epoch Times from 2012 to 2014 and director of sales and marketing from 2015 to 2016, recalled Kitze speaking to Epoch advertising salespeople at a 2012 San Francisco seminar.
“While I was already familiar with the fact that the Chinese Communist Party was officially persecuting Some [sic] 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in China and that the leftist media [...] was strangely ignoring this story, even to this day, that included over 75 Communist government hospitals busy murdering thousands of these people every year since the early two thousands, to harvest and sell their body parts to U.S. and other world customers,” wrote Tullar in an email.
“Mr. Kitze was the first business guy I had ever met that was dedicating a significant part of his business profits and effort to exposing these facts. He struck me as a kind and genuine person who cared about his fellow man,” said Tullar. “While my understanding of and experience with him was limited, I was nonetheless inspired by his effort and compassion. And his presentation turned out to be useful as well.”
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The Epoch Timeshas always maintained a hawkish editorial tone towards China but that line took on a more overtly partisan and focused U.S. political message over the course of the Trump presidency, pushing a steady onslaught of articles and videos labeling the novel coronavirus “CCP Virus” and advancing a series of thinly reported or unsubstantiated theories about vast Chinese government cover-ups to hide the origins of COVID-19.
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The paper’seditorial board even went so far as to claim, “If someone is unfortunately infected with the CCP virus, we suggest that he or she sincerely says ‘down with the CCP.’ Maybe a miracle will happen.”
“Staying away from the CCP and condemning the CCP can help any individual, organization, or country alleviate or even avoid attacks of the CCP virus,” the ed board added. “They may then embrace a wonderful future.”
Over the course of the Trump presidency, Epoch emerged as a prolific pro-Trump media outlet.
When Facebook banned the Epoch Media Group from buying ads in August 2019, it later said the news outlet spent over $9 million on ads, including approximately 11,000 pro-Trump Facebook advertisements, more than any other organization other than the Trump campaign.
Epoch denied the ads were purchased by The Epoch Timesbut Facebook said Epoch evaded the company’s transparency rules for political advertising and “repeatedly violated a number of our policies, including our policies against coordinated inauthentic behavior, spam and misrepresentation, to name just a few.”
Epoch’s pivot toward Trump appears to have coincided with the ramp up of BeforeItsNews.com’s drumbeat of pro-Trump articles, and Kitze’s conspiracy theories.
“[BeforeItsNews] was one of the first news websites to really cover Donald Trump and his candidacy in a serious manner and, you know, we took him seriously,” Kitze told a conspiracy oriented podcast, The Common Sense Show, in
. “We didn’t think he was just some flash in the pan.”
In 2017, the alliance between Kitze and Epoch became official, when Kitze joined Epoch’s board as a vice president in 2017—an association that is listed nowhere on Epoch’s website, Kitze’s online social media profiles, or in a2018 profile on him in the newspaper. His continued promotion of disproven or baseless conspiracy theories is seemingly in contradiction withEpoch’s “dedicat[ion] to truthful reporting.”
:{Meanwhile, Kitze kept elevating the strangest of right-wing conspiracy theories. In a 2018}
:{ on the Common Sense Show, }::{Kitze referenced the alleged “organ harvesting” of Falun Gong practitioners in China, explaining that he believed they were also being used for “satanic” ritual purposes “as we’ve just seen in the U.S. with all the Pizzagate things.”}:
Kitze’s reference to Pizzagate is particularly jarring as it came a year and a half after a man with an assault rifle was arrested outside a pizza restaurant in Washington D.C. attempting to investigate online conspiracy claims that a pedophile ring was operating in the restaurant’s basement with the help of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Kitze went on to echoa largely debunked assertion made by the Trump administration about child trafficking on the U.S.-Mexico border, saying:
All these kids coming across the border, these ones all the Democrats were up in arms about, you know, ‘how can you separate the families?’. Fifty-percent of them aren’t even with their family. They’re being trafficked and God knows where these poor kids are going to end up.
In 2019, Kitze appeared on the same show to discuss, among other topics, a conspiracy theory involving the Clintons selling “all of the U.S. secrets” to China. “The Clintons had asked for $1 trillion but [the Chinese] got a deal and only had to pay the Clintons $900 billion,”
, referencing reporting in The Epoch Times Chinese language edition.
Since forming BeforeItsNews, Kitze focused heavily on privacy-related products, including Unseen, a now shuttered secure messaging platform, and founding the cryptocurrency Flashcoin, both of which were featured in aglowing 2018 profile in The Epoch Times that made no reference to his role as an officer in the organization.
Kitze also serves as chairman of the Alphabit Fund, a Dubai and Cayman Islandsbased cryptocurrency fund aiming toraise $300 million thatReuters described in 2018 as “one of the world’s largest digital currency funds.”
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Alphabit’s co-founder and managing director, Saeed Al Darmaki, worked for over eight years at Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund,Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, raising questions about whether Alphabit has state backing. Kitze did not respond to a request for comment about the investors in Alphabit, his responsibilities as a vice president at Epoch or his current relationship with BeforeItsNews.
Epoch, for its part, offered incomplete and contradictory answers about Kitze’s role at the news organization.
Dr. Dana Cheng, a spokesperson for The Epoch Times, responded to questions about Kitze’s involvement, saying, “Mr. Kitze had limited involvement with The Epoch Times more than 7 years ago,” adding, “There is no relationship between The Epoch Times and any of Mr. Kitze’s endeavors, including beforeitsnews."
Cheng appeared to contradict her statement about Kitze’s involvement with Epoch more than seven years ago when questioned about his appearance on tax filings in the 2017 and 2018 tax years. “Yes, he was a board member in 2017 and 2018, with minimal involvement,” said Cheng, adding, “He is not a board member nor a VP now.”
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https://www.mediamatters.org/maga-trolls/far-right-message-boards-push-murder-conspiracy-theory-regarding-rep-ilhan-omar
no lnx twt pix many
A new baseless conspiracy theory about Rep. Ilhan Omar can be traced back to far-right message boards
WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN
PUBLISHED09/09/19
UPDATED 12/06/19
Update (12/6/19): On October 7, Danielle Stella, a Republican congressional candidate running against Omar and a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, pushed the conspiracy theory about Omar on Telegram. She posted an image of a tweet that claimed that an “apparent hit man” for Omar “fails to kill [her] target, and kills look alike” and accused the mainstream media of trying to “desperately … label the targeted murder as ‘random.’”
Far-right message boards created and helped spread a baseless conspiracy theory suggesting that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) ordered a Washington, D.C., woman’s killing. The conspiracy theory has spread onto multiple social media platforms, where some content promoting it has gone viral.
On August 27, a young woman was reportedly stabbed to death while walking dogs in Washington, D.C. Despite reports that local police consider it to be a random attack by a suspect whose “adulthood has been marked by periods of homelessness and hospitalizations for mental illness,” far-right message boards have without any evidence connected the woman’s killing to Omar. The baseless claim has since spread onto social media platforms including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
How the baseless claim spread
On August 29, an anonymous user on 4chan’s “/pol/,” a message board known for spreading white nationalism and conspiracy theories, claimed that the D.C. stabbing victim looked “very similar” to a woman who has alleged that her husband had an affair with Omar (which her husband has denied). The 4chan user claimed that the slain dog walker “could easily have been mistaken for” the other woman, calling it a “possible Omaracide.” The post received more than 300 replies, with many users agreeing that the conspiracy theory “seems likely” and lauding the original poster.
4chan Omar conspiracy theory
Later that evening, a user onpro-gun forum AR15.comcited “/pol/” in asking, “Was the murder of a random redhead actually a political assassination plot to benefit Ilhan Omar?”
Gun forum Omar conspiracy1]
During the morning of August 30, the baseless claim spread to subreddits “r/The_Donald” and “r/conspiracy,” both of which are also known for spreading conspiracy theories. The “r/The_Donald” user posted largely the same language as the 4chan post, and “r/conspiracy” posted an image of the 4chan post. The post on “r/The_Donald” received thousands of “upvotes,” ranking it higher on the subreddit and helping it to spread.
The Donald Omar conspiracy
Conspiracy subreddit Omar conspiracy]
That afternoon, a far-right YouTube channel posted a video pushing the conspiracy theory titled “Did Ilhan Omar Order a Hit Job On Her Boyfriend's Wife?!” The video directly cited the post from “r/The_Donald” and has nearly 90,000 views.
YouTube Omar conspiracy theory image]
That evening, Twitter account @newanddangerous tweeted much of the same language as the 4chan post, and the tweet has received nearly 10,000 retweets.
@newanddangerous Omar conspiracy]
Among those who have shared @newanddangerous’ tweet include conspiracy theorist Devon Stack; a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who was previously thrown out of a Joe Biden event; and a former adult film star turned far-right conspiracy theorist. The tweet was also shared over Telegram by a far-right channel.
Devon Stack conspiracy theory
PG Howie Omar conspiracy theory
Jenna Jameson Omar conspiracy
On the morning of August 31, a verified YouTube channel supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory posted a video sharing the conspiracy theory and directly cited the 4chan post. The video has nearly 100,000 views.
YouTube QAnon channel Omar conspiracy theory image]
Meanwhile, the conspiracy theory continued to spread on Twitter,including from multiple accounts promoting QAnon and its slogan, “Where we go one, we go all,” or “WWG1WGA.” Some of their tweets were also shared on Facebook, along with the 4chan thread and the conspiracy theory itself.
@PROUDPATRIOT45 Omar conspiracy theory]
Also on August 31, another QAnon account on a site called poal also shared the 4chan thread, saying “/pol/” had “nailed it.”Before It’s News, a conspiracy theory site known for pushing falsities, including Pizzagate, cross-posted an article the following day questioning if Omar had “tried to murder her new lover’s wife.” It also cited 4chan.
Before It's News Omar conspiracy theory]
The conspiracy theory also continued to circulate on 4chan -- one user even cited @newanddangerous’ tweet with language based on the original 4chan post -- and on “r/The_Donald,” where a user posted an image of the August 29 gun forum post. In total, there have been more than 400 posts on 4chan about the conspiracy theory.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/05/05/fake-news-and-alt-right-are-pushing-forged-documents-aid-marine-le-pen-frances-election/216305
Forged documents originating on 4chan alleging that French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron was evading taxes spread online thanks to an ecosystem that includes social media, “alt-right” outlets, and fake news purveyors. The campaign was seemingly aided by Russian-linked entities, and it subsequently reached Macron’s opponent, who aired the claim in a public debate.
Macron is competing in a May 7 runoff against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. On May 3, hours before a scheduled debate between Macron and Le Pen, an anonymous user on 4chan posted documents purporting to show that Macron used a shell company to dodge taxes. Users on the forum responded that the documents should be sent to “independent journalists” and “the alternative media” like “Cernovic (sic), Breitbart, and so on,” and encouraged each other to “spam” the documents “on social media” such as Twitter to get “it trending.” They also said to “send it to Le Pen.” The documents soon spread on Twitter, with many of the Twitter accounts promoting them appearing to have connections to Russia, according to a Belgian researcher. The claim was promoted by “alt-right” media figures such as Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec.
That these figures would attempt to smear Le Pen’s opponent is not surprising given that Le Pen is widely admired by much of the “alt-right” and closely tied with Russia.
Along with Twitter, 4chan’s campaign was picked up by forums on 8chan and Reddit; “alt-right” fringe outlets The Gateway Pundit, Got News, Zero Hedge, and Daily Stormer; and fake news purveyor Before It’s News.
The 4chan-based documents eventually reached Le Pen herself. During her debate with Macron, she said, “I hope that we will not find out that you have an offshore account in the Bahamas.” Le Pen later backed down on her claim, and Macron filed a legal complaint against her for the statement. Multiple outlets have reported that the documents were fake, with The Telegraph noting that they were “widely denounced as crude forgeries.” Additionally, following Le Pen's accusation, the French prosecutor's office has opened an investigationr egarding “suspicions of fake news being spread to influence Sunday's presidential vote.”
The case is yet another example of the way the misinformation ecosystem involving the “alt-right” and fake news purveyors amplifiesfringe falsities and lies (and even Kremlin-connected conspiracy theories). The network has often succeeded in pushing those false claims into more traditional conservative and mainstream outlets and, thus, the public realm.
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A report by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found that a claim that recent airstrikes in Syria were a “false flag” operation -- an operation that either didn't really occur or that were conducted by a party other than the Syrian government -- which went viral among the "alt-right" actually originated with a Syrian propaganda outlet that supports the current regime and spread to a series of pro-Kremlin conspiracy websites and fake news purveyors before being promoted by “alt-right” figures including Infowars’ Alex Jones and Mike Cernovich.
The report showed that key claims, quotes, and images that were initially reported by Al-Masdar, the outlet that supports Syrian President Bashar Assad, were used in reports on pro-Kremlin sites, fake news sites, and on Infowars.
[graphic]
In addition, the report noted that, after the "false flag" claim was promoted by Jones and Cernovich, Twitter accounts that appear to be bots accelerated the use of hashtags about the attack, which led to the hashtag #SyriaHoax going viral. The report concluded, “The Syrian regime’s reaction to the chemical attack is no surprise,” but “what is noteworthy is the way in which the regime’s response … was translated rapidly and directly into coverage on alt-right websites, most obviously Infowars.” From the report:
The chemical attack came at dawn, local time, on April 4. It was widely reported and provoked outrage and condemnation, triggering immediate calls for an investigation. Photographs and videos from the scene showed hideous images of dead children and footage of rescuers, including the White Helmets group, washing down victims.
The same day, website Al-Masdar News, which supports the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, published an article claiming that the story was a “false flag” operation.
[...]
Over the next two days, the al-Masdar piece was picked up by a number of pro-Kremlin and anti-Western sites.
It was reproduced verbatim by at least three conspiracy sites: globalresearch.ca, informationclearinghouse.info and The Lifeboat News. A number of pro-Kremlin sites known for their use of false reporting quoted it at length. These included The Duran and The Russophile (also known as Russia News Now), together with conspiracy site Investment Watch Blog.
A third group of sites wrote their own reports, but very largely followed the Al-Masdar arguments. These included 21st Century Wire and Before It’s News, both of which ran a video repeating the claims and using the same imagery.
[...]
The most influential pickup came on April 5, when US-based conspiracy site Infowars ran its version of the story. Infowars is a highly influential site among the “alt-right” movement in the US; its leading light, Alex Jones, has over 600,000 Twitter followers.
[...]
The Syrian regime’s reaction to the chemical attack is no surprise. It has consistently denied all accusations of atrocities, and accused its critics of false claims, as documented in the Atlantic Council’s report “Breaking Aleppo”.
What is noteworthy is the way in which the regime’s response, launched on a site which has repeatedly amplified Assad’s messaging, was translated rapidly and directly into coverage on alt-right websites, most obviously Infowars.
Conspiracy website Infowars and its proprietor, Alex Jones, have heavily praised Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months, with Jones previously bragging about praise from “top Putin advisers” and even Putin himself in regards to his pro-Trump coverage. Jones also claims to have “talked to folks very close to the president” about Trump’s Syria policy. Both Jones and Cernovich, a member of the so-called “alt-right,” have helped popularize numerous conspiracy theories, including the “Pizzagate” story that falsely claimed an underground child sex trafficking ring was run out of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.
In March, the FBI opened an investigationinto Russian operatives’ use of “bots” to push pro-Trump news from far-right outlets to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and the Senate Intelligence Committee opened an investigation into Russia’s use of fake news to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Before It’s News, one of the pro-Trump propaganda outlets mentioned in the report, and a site that Media Matters has identified as a fake news purveyor, has denied any connection between Trump and the Russian government.